'How can we change the relationship so we think of these devices not as devices but as assistants or even companions?' he asked."
Add breasts?
Email traffic volumes get pretty high. Even if you have local single-instance storage, remote systems aren't smart enough to take advantage of that. For example, an on-campus user sends a 50MB video to a list
...
This seems like a specious example; are there any list servers that are configured to allow 50MB attachments?
Yes. A number of them.
But more to the point, by moving email off-campus, the university's external link now has to carry what was formerly more contained within the faster local network. This will have some cost, either in paying for increased capacity or in suffering diminished connectivity.
Correct. That also calculates into this, on the opposite side of the points I was making - I was not arguing to off-net the email, only pointing out some of the reasoning used.
Backups require additional storage, tape or disk. Tape is sluggish, and a full system backup of a large mail server takes a lot of time. Brick level backups are worse. Restoring individuals' accidentally deleted emails is often time consuming, since they seldom can actually tell you the subject line of the message you're trying to restore for them, into their too-full mailbox.
Again, this seems specious. Does Google restore accidentally-deleted emails for users?
Your point is fallacious. While Google won't bother to offer the user that sort of service, system administrators of locally-owned email services at colleges/universities often don't have the ability to turn said requests/demands down. So my point is hardly specious, it's a definite support issue for some college IT staff in that they have to help users undelete things they shouldnt' have deleted.
Most campus mail systems are commercial applications, such as MS Exchange. They are costly, and the license fees for running them are often more costly and grow faster than your storage. Open source is a great alternative, but some administrations aren't too accepting of anything that they can't buy, for various reasons.
Are there serious universities that run student email on Exchange? I admit I haven't been everywhere, but I've sure never seen that.
Many colleges (not just universities) run Exchange. I'm not sure how you differentiate between serious and non-serious institutions. I know of colleges with only their staff/faculty accounts in Exchange, and others with student accounts in excess of 40,000, running Exchange. I also know of institutions where each department runs their own system, and Exchange pops up in some of the departments.
If you google "Microsoft Exchange college" or "Microsoft Exchange university" you will get thousands of links to higher education bodies running Exchange for at least some of their population. For example: Texas Christian University, Edinburgh Napier University, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (45,000 employees), University of Kentucky, University of Sydney, University of Arkansas, Colorado State University, University of Connecticut, University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, Eastern Illinois University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (if that's not a serious university in your definition, then there is no such thing), Pace University, University of South Carolina, University of Washington, California State University at Northridge, University of Virginia, University of New Orleans, University of Pittsburgh, Tufts University, and many many more. And I haven't even started pasting in "college" names (versus "university").
You really should get out more.
There are a number of good reasons for *not* hosting your own email.
None of this precludes the fact that there are compliance and privacy issues surrounding email. FERPA, HIPPA, GLB, SOX, and Privacy Act may all apply. It's not an easy decision. There are at least as many factors supporting retained hosting. Outsourcing student email hosting can make a lot of sense. I don't recommend outsourcing faculty/staff email for an educational institution, but there are certainly a lot of reasons to consider it.
Where there's a will, there's a relative.