The University of Wisconsin-Madison and a host of other colleges are considering saving money by switching student e-mail service to free, professional services like Google, Microsoft or Yahoo.
More than 1,000 colleges have already signed up with such companies, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
But UW-Madison and UW System officials are carefully reviewing the pros and cons of outsourcing e-mail, according to Brian Rust, communications manager for the Division of Information Technology at the UW, and David Giroux, a spokesman for the UW System.