Should You Use Your University or Personal Email for GitHub Account?

Creating a GitHub account with your university or personal email involves several considerations. In this article, we will analyze the pros and cons of both approaches, with a focus on the benefits and potential drawbacks to help you make an informed decision.

Using University Email for GitHub Account

Using your university email to create a GitHub account can provide you with valuable resources and networking opportunities while you are a student, but it may also limit your access after graduation. Here are the key points to consider:

Access to Special Benefits

One of the main advantages of using a university email for a GitHub account is the access to the GitHub Student Developer Pack. This pack includes free access to a wide range of tools and services, such as GitHub Copilot, secret scanning, private repositories, and more, which can significantly enhance your learning experience and project development.

Networking Opportunities

Using your university email can help you connect with other students and faculty, potentially leading to collaborations and mentorship opportunities. These connections can be invaluable for your career development and can open up various paths within the tech industry.

Should You Create a GitHub Account with Your Personal Email?

Using a personal email, on the other hand, can offer more flexibility and long-term benefits:

Professional Identity

A personal email can help you establish a professional online presence, which you can maintain and use even after you graduate. This can be crucial in building your digital footprint and networking for job opportunities.

Access After Graduation

Once you graduate, you may lose access to your university email, which can complicate account recovery or lead to the loss of your GitHub account if it’s tied exclusively to that email. Staying with a personal email ensures you can retain access to your account and manage it seamlessly.

Recommendation

It is generally a good idea to create a GitHub account with your university email, taking advantage of the perks while you are a student. At the same time, you can link your personal email as a secondary email to maintain long-term access and ensure you can recover the account if needed. This approach allows you to benefit from the student pack while still having the flexibility to use a personal email in your professional life.

Additional Considerations

Here are some additional points to consider:

Flexibility with Different Accounts

If you want to contribute to projects from different accounts, you can simply log in and out of the GitHub application to switch between them. Most developers recommend using a code editor like PHPStorm for managing different GitHub accounts on your machine, as it simplifies the process without the need to switch accounts manually.

Contributing and Transitioning

When hiring new team members, it’s common to create a work account for them and add them as a contributor to your current projects. This allows for seamless integration and easy management of team members post-termination. Similarly, if you graduate, you can transition your work to a personal account with minimal disruption.

Secure Your Data

As of August 2021, GitHub has discontinued user/password logins for code pushes and pulls, so it's advisable to use SSH keys for authentication. If you want to keep all your repositories after graduation, you can set up a secondary email or download a .zip file of the repository and clone it to your machine under a new account. You can then push the changes with the --allow-unrelated-histories flag to maintain the history.

Another option is to create both a graduate and personal account, keeping copies of each project on both. This way, you can add your graduate account as a contributor to your personal account and set up two git remotes for each repository. When you want to push changes, you can use commands like:

Where graduate and origin are the names of your git remotes.

Overall, the decision to use a university or personal email for your GitHub account depends on your specific needs and long-term goals. By carefully weighing the pros and cons, you can make the best choice for your academic and professional journeys.