@clacke That stinks. While they probably worried about security, liability, and misuse (educational e-mail accounts sometimes qualify one for special access & prices), it still seems like a bad thing to say "I know we promised this, but we're changing our minds".

My last university didn't make any promise, but the e-mail account was still present for at least a couple of years. Then one time I decided to see whether it still existed and the answer was no. Since they hadn't made any promises and I wasn't using it anyway, it was not a big deal.