I’ve been a student a few times in my life, so I understand what it’s like to be tight on cash. The first time was at uni doing a Bachelor of Microelectronic Engineering, the second time was at TAFE studying Applications Programming and the third time was at another uni doing a Bachelor of Accounting. Granted, during my stint studying Accounting I was working full time so money wasn’t an issue during that period of my life.
However, when you’re a full-time student you’re quite often struggling to make ends meet and I can understand and relate. I was talking to one of my friends on instant messenger the other day while she was at uni and she was having a bit of a rant about how she wished her lecturers would stop giving her documents in .doc and .docx (both Microsoft Office formats) and it got me thinking.
Why are students still expected to purchase Microsoft Office? Sure, most of them can (and do) attain Office through torrents but there are still a few honest ones who do the right thing and purchase the student version Microsoft distribute. But here’s the thing…why the fudge should they even have to do that? Everyone…and I repeat…everyone has access to Google Docs for free.
Here are just a few of the benefits:
- There isn’t any installation required
- Files can be exported easily in many different formats
- Files can be shared publicly (so a lecturer can share an assignment, lecture notes and files to everyone)
- Everything is stored in the cloud! Read: You can access your documents anywhere, anytime on any computer with internet access…plus if your computer blows up your assignment is still in the cloud!
- It’s freakin’ FREE!!!!!!
So…can somebody with some weight in the university or government world please get universities using Google Docs instead of Office and save students some extra dollars and lots of stress? That would be awesome for all our current students. Remember, they are going to be building our economies in a matter of years. How about we think logically and look after them?
How about you retweet or share this on Facebook if you agree with my reasoning? If not, drop me a comment below because I’d love to hear other peoples thoughts.
USA universities have been rolling out Google Apps (including Google Docs) since 2006.
Many Australian and NZ universities have recently started too (2009)… but remember it’s a big job to switch a complete Uni over to Google Apps Education Edition !