Why students don’t read your e-mails: A critical look at how university email communications guide or confuse students through the student experience and the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper examines the perception that ‘students don’t read e-mail’ through the execution and analysis of a comprehensive e-mail audit conducted by New York University’s Enrollment Management Marketing division from May 2019 through May 2020. By looking at the volume, content and quality of e-mail received from the university, we see how institutional messaging can either support or complicate the student experience. This research includes a human-processed dataset of all incoming e-mail communications received during the audit period, quantitative and qualitative analyses of the communications and focus group testimony from undergraduate students. We examine e-mail communications through both the everyday business of being a student and through high-stakes events like the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper illustrates that while volume should not be dismissed as an area of concern among university communicators, the underlying practices that cause e-mail to be ignored are more complex and demand a more strategic approach to studentfacing communications.