Students feel ‘spammed’ by ‘overload’ of university emails

Students feel that they receive “too many emails” from their universities, and that they find their institution’s communications “inconsistent, inauthentic, and rather annoying”, researchers have found.

A new paper says that an “overload” of emails sent from universities to students meant important emails were getting “buried” and meant that students simply disengaged from their inboxes.

The article, based on interviews with students, professional staff who typically distribute emails, and senior academics, found that students were more likely to read emails sent by course tutors, whereas they were likely to ignore mass emails sent from unknown senders. 

“Students spoke positively about the messages that related to modules they were studying but were critical of the ‘dear student’ mass communications, which most described as ‘irrelevant’ and some described as ‘spam’,” says the paper published in Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education.

It found students were “remarkably consistent” when filtering their emails, explaining: “They read all the emails relating to their modules, then prioritised the rest using the name of the generator and the subject line. Messages from teaching staff were welcomed, but students rarely read messages from unknown generators, messages sent to all students or newsletters.”

Student services staff said they felt “uncomfortable [and] even guilty” about some of the messages they were asked to distribute, and one student told the researchers: “In my first year, like, there were so many emails being sent out that I basically just gave up.”

However, report co-author Judith Simpson, lecturer in material culture at the University of Leeds, told Times Higher Education that while institutions were “a long way away from optimal communication”, it was “important to note that we measured student perception of email”.

“Some students definitely feel as if they are being spammed, but we don’t actually know how many emails it takes to create that effect. A small number of emails asking you to do ‘life admin’ might feel like a horrible burden if you haven’t done ‘life admin’ before,” she said.

The article concedes that “universities are in a difficult situation” and that “students expect to be provided with necessary information but seem unprepared to read it”. 

It argues that while this is an “eternal problem” and students failed to read paper handbooks in the pre-email era, “‘overload’ does seem to have been accentuated by the pandemic”, when universities “compensated” for the lack of in-person communication by “reaching out” to students via email. This often included important news, as well as information about “all the good things the university was doing” during this period to support students. 

“Staff and students are less likely to meet on campus now that hybrid working is the norm, and the ‘email habits’ developed in the pandemic are still in operation,” the article says. 

It suggests that to improve student engagement, universities should consider rerouteing well-being messages through personal tutors, and that administrative staff should be introduced to students – virtually or in-person – to increase “trust” in communications.

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com