After Microsoft cut the amount of free storage granted to educational institutions, Columbia will have to reduce the 1TB that students, faculty and staff currently have or pay extra.
“The college will be assessing its future storage plans with heavy consideration to students’ needs as well as those of faculty and staff,” said Lambrini Lukidis, associate vice president of Strategic Communications and External Relations.
The change will happen in October 2026, Lukidis said.
Lukidis was not able to provide a number for the change in storage capacity.
Microsoft made the change to educational plans in December 2024. Each educational institution that uses their program now will get 100TB of free pooled storage across OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange. Colleges can choose to purchase extra storage in 10TB increments priced at $300 per month.
Some schools have already notified their campus communities of the changes. James Madison University in Virginia told its community last fall when Microsoft announced the change that students would get 100GB of storage and employees would have 1TB.
Microsoft said it made the decision because the majority of educational institutions did not use the previously allotted space. James Madison echoed this in its message to the community.
At the University of Cincinnati, students had their storage reduced to 50GB in December as part of a two-year phased approach to the Microsoft changes.
Although the pending change at Columbia was disclosed at an Academic Technology Committee earlier this year, Columbia has not yet communicated its plans to the campus community.
Ron Fleischer, associate professor in the School of Design and member of the Academic Technology Committee, said that if the storage capacity were to decrease, it would affect the students in what they’ll be able to create like films and animation projects, which is dependent on the size of files.
Fleischer teaches an animation production course where students work a full year to create a film. “Everything was pretty much on OneDrive, all of the files, all of the frames that they render,” he said. “It takes up a lot of storage space, so we may have to end up rotating.”
While unsure of what the new storage capacity will be, Fleischer said there will always be “higher demands on students’ work.” With changing standards in film quality throughout the years — standard definition to high definition and 1080p — Fleischer said “We always want to provide our students with the opportunities to create films that live up to whatever the current standards are,” and storage space will always be relevant to that.
Despite this, Fleischer said there can be “work throughs,” such as backing up older projects on an external hard drive to make space on OneDrive accounts.
“In the past, the school has always met the needs of the students in regards to storage space,” he said.
Marcelo Caplan, associate professor in the School of Design and a member of the Academic Technology Committee, also recommended students to store their projects and files elsewhere accessible offline. Caplan said he believes that any reduction in storage will have an impact, but added that the change will serve as a “waking call” to students to “have their own work in a place that they can rely on.”
“I am pro-students all the time, and I don’t like to see students [when] they are frustrated because they need the material they don’t have access to,” Caplan said. “The work the students are doing is too valuable for the students not to have this work in a place that they can access 100%, when they’re students and when they are alumni — that is important.”
Oshun Cortez, a first-year film and television major, said less storage would impact a lot of students. For his editing classes, Cortez said that it is usually a requirement to have 1TB of storage, but for those who aren’t able to obtain an external hard drive like him, all they have access to is OneDrive.
“I don’t have [an external hard drive] because I don’t have money to get one,” Cortez said. “I really don’t have the financial status to really do that.”
Elijah Greer, a sophomore music business major, said he doesn’t believe he will be affected very much by any storage changes since he mainly uses his personal Google Drive for school work.
“Unless I have a surplus of assignments this semester and I can’t put them all in, that would be devastating,” Greer said.
Like Greer, Ashley Bates, a senior film and television major, said she feels pretty neutral about the change in storage since she doesn’t use much of it. However, she said she is grateful for how much storage students are currently given.
“I feel like I could take it anywhere, log in to my OneDrive and then have all my assignments,” Bates said, referring to her work.
Copy edited by Trinity Balboa
Resumen en Español:
Microsoft está reduciendo el almacenamiento en la nube gratuito para instituciones educativas, lo que obliga a Columbia a reducir el 1TB por usuario, incluyendo los estudiantes, o pagar extra. Aunque la universidad no ha anunciado detalles, los profesores advierten que los estudiantes de cine y animación pueden tener dificultades con archivos grandes y recomiendan hacer copias de seguridad externas.
Las reacciones son mixtas: algunos estudiantes se preocupan por el costo del almacenamiento externo, mientras que otros no se ven afectados. Los profesores enfatizan la importancia de que los estudiantes mantengan su trabajo accesible después de la universidad.
Resumen por Manuel Nocera
