Your current access to IT services is determined by many factors:
Because access is often based on your current, former, or future affiliations with the UW, access to services will change or expire when your affiliations change.
No, your UW NetID itself does not have an expiration date. In some circumstances, a year of inactivity can require you to reset your password before accessing services again.
Expiration of access to services offered to students (undergraduate, graduate, and Professional & Continuing Education students) is based on your enrollment status. In many cases, access expires after you are not enrolled for two consecutive quarters, excluding summer quarter, which aligns with the rules for enrollment eligibility. Expiration notifications are sent for some services. When you are no longer a student, you can continue to sign in with your UW NetID, and you can forward your UW email address to your own personal email address.
| If your last quarter enrolled was... | Your services expire at... |
| Spring Quarter | Beginning of Winter Quarter |
| Summer Quarter | Beginning of Winter Quarter |
| Fall Quarter | Beginning of Spring Quarter |
| Winter Quarter | Beginning of Fall Quarter |
Expiration of access to services offered to faculty and staff is based on employment status and additional roles at the UW. Access often expires with termination of employment. Expiration notifications are sent for some services 3 days after your last day of work if you have additional roles. When you are no longer an employee, you can continue to sign in with your UW NetID ONLY to specific resources, and you can forward your UW email address to an email address outside UW managed systems.
Expiration of access to services offered to retired faculty and retired staff is based on employment status and access often expires with termination of employment and your last day of work. Details for faculty and staff are provided above.
Emeritus faculty can continue to sign in with UW NetID, and are eligible to use some IT services. For example, UW Google and UW Office 365 services do not expire.
NOTE: There may be a short gap between an eligible faculty member’s retirement date and completion of the process that establishes their emeritus affiliation. For details, refer to the Gaps between termination and emeritus status section of UWHR's System access when UW employment ends page.
When your affiliation, entitlements, or other authorizations change, you may receive an expiration notice sent via email to your UW email address. These notifications often relate to IT services like email and storage whose expiration processes may result in deletion of data. The notifications do not indicate your UW NetID itself is expiring.
UWIT has been directed to block access to nearly all applications for individuals who no longer have an active relationship with the UW. Individuals with an "active relationship" to the UW are those with a current affiliation (current student, current employee, alum, etc.), and former students. Access remains in place to resources used to manage your account, such as access to identity.uw.edu; access to resources such as UW Email, Canvas, or other web resources do not.
NOTE: Faculty and staff roles that are intermittent are not considered active in the period between their time with the UW (i.e. only Spring Quarter roles lose access after Spring Quarter).