Google is implementing storage limits on Fordham University Google accounts starting this fall, according to an email announcement from the Fordham Institute of Technology sent out on June 5. The limits will include all Fordham Google accounts starting Oct. 30, 2024, according to the Fordham Information Technology (IT) website.
Under the upcoming storage limits, students will have 10 GB, alumni 5 GB, faculty and staff 40 GB, and emeritus and guest/corporate accounts will be limited to 15 GB.
“Most Fordham users are substantially below the quota, and less than 10% of the entire Fordham community (over 25,000 users) was over the limit and impacted by the storage changes,” said Katherine Morris, the Fordham IT communications manager.
Most members of the Fordham community will not be significantly impacted by the change in Fordham’s Google storage policy, but some students are already evaluating their current storage usage in their Fordham Google accounts.
“I constantly take photos and videos, which takes up a lot of my storage,” said Eldaa Ouedraogo, PCS ’26. Ouedraogo is a social media content creator and stores her unpublished content in her Fordham Google Drive account.
The upcoming storage limits will also affect Ouedrago’s class-related digital habits. “I also download a lot of class material… For some readings, I download 20 pages at a time or more,” she said. She doesn’t anticipate exceeding the 10 GB student limit, since she already clears out old files periodically. “It may force me to clean out my storage more often than I usually would,” Ouederago said.
Google first announced storage limits for educational institutions in February 2021. “Storage is not being consumed equitably across — nor within — institutions, and school leaders often don’t have the tools they need to manage this,” the Google announcement stated. “To support schools into the future and ensure fair distribution of this valuable resource, we will be implementing a new pooled storage model and helping admins and school leaders manage their storage.” The new Google storage model provides schools and universities with a baseline of 100 TB of pooled cloud storage shared across all users in an institution. (1 TB is equal to 1,000 GB.)
Fordham has been working towards the implementation of Google’s educational storage limits for the past two years. “Google initially began the conversation about storage limits in 2022 and, in the years that followed, slowly offered more information and guidance about implementation,” said Morris. “After their initial announcement, Fordham worked with Google to develop a timeline, directions and path forward, which was finalized in early 2024. As part of these discussions, the deadline was extended to October 2024, allowing the university more time to plan and implement.”
To ensure compliance with the new storage limits, Fordham’s Google Storage Task Force will be contacting Fordham community members who are over the upcoming limits and need to take further action to meet the new requirements. “Our goal is to provide you with the necessary support and guidance during this transition,” the email announcement stated.
Fordham IT and the Google Storage Task Force will also put on town halls, Zoom office hours and webinars throughout the fall semester to assist members of Fordham with the upcoming storage changes, according to a follow-up email sent to the Fordham community on June 11. “These sessions will offer detailed information, answer your questions, and provide practical tips for managing your storage effectively,” the email stated.
Fordham instituted the Google Storage Task Force in late 2023, according to Fordham IT’s Google Storage Quota webpage. The task force is co-led by Clara Perdiz, Jason Benedict and Lindsay Karp from the Fordham IT office, as well as other representatives of Fordham’s administration.
