Alumnus Accounts

Last Reviewed 2024-11-18

The Department of Computer Science provides alumnus Gmail accounts to PhD and MS graduates upon request within 90 days of graduation. These accounts are limited to 15GB of Google storage space. The accounts do not include other Google services or departmental storage. Alumni who are interested in setting up an alumnus account should use the contact button on this page or email help@cs.unc.edu.

Alumnus account limits

In 2021, Google announced a storage policy that provides universities with a baseline of pooled storage shared across all users. In response to this change, CS was forced to set limits on storage usage. Since your Google storage space will be reduced to 15GB when converted, alumni must reduce their usage within 90 days of receiving a message to that effect from CS2 (or 90 days after graduation, whichever is first) to retain their accounts. CS does not back up Google services. Failure to respond to this request will lead to account deletion, including permanent loss of files stored in your CS Google account.

In November 2024, Google announced new licensing restrictions for education accounts. Under the new licensing model, alumnus accounts will only provide access to Gmail. For more information, please see https://support.google.com/a/answer/15603742?fl=1&sjid=6263844609930111487-NA

Inactive alumnus accounts

Inactive alumnus accounts (including accounts with passwords older than two years) will lead to account deletion, including permanent loss of files stored in your CS Google account.

Downloading a copy of your CS Google account data

You can use Google Takeout to export the files in your CS Google account. This is useful to back up your data, or to migrate it to a service outside of Google.

View account quota

You can view your current storage usage at https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/quota