For sure.
Typically what I use any cloud service for, no matter how 'private' they are, is my school work, music library and some small coding projects.
Could they? Yes
Will they? Probably not. College IT typically give zero fucks about what students are doing unlike compulsory education IT.
If you're really concerned about them reading your homework zip the files and encrypt them.
If it's under your college account then yes they will likely have the ability to access online storage.
But they won't in reality.
Like stated, just encrypt the files before uploading them to the cloud and you're golden
Use your school stuff for school, work stuff for work, and have a private cloud for private stuff.
Separation keeps all things organized and you don't have to be paranoid.
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And that's exactly what RMS says about in this
https://youtu.be/jUibaPTXSHk (I posted about is the other week) https://forum.level1techs.com/t/richard-stallman-explains-everything/112609
The reason anonymity is important and that we should be constantly survailed is because it affects so many things, not just long term privacy, or potentially your freedom, but things like whistleblowing as well.
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The short time I was at college I learned a lot about assholes that don't need to be in my business. Because of the hardware hacking that I do and all the DEFCON and 33c3 that I watch they thought I was going to do something illegal and kick me out for it until I showed them the stuff I do. Otherwise, all my IRC traffic, torrents, any data transferred, anything tha I put out was fed through a company called Merit Networks. What Merit does is monitor traffic that goes through a business connection and reports anything the business doesn't like to them. When I found this out I petitioned them to remove this un-needed surveillance and even presented a stout case and a pile of loopholes left in their user agreement that were so vague you could fit jesus on a cross through it (it was a catholic school).
Sadly despite my fighting back no one gave a shit. Not even other students doing security and software studies (mostly because no one there really knew enough to understand how in-depth that shit was). So, instead I installed i2p on my phone and uploaded code that way either on 3G or the school network. When they tried to threaten me I came back around with their same bullshit arguments they made.
In all honesty if you're doing stuff that you think will make for a pain in the ass later on, cover your tracks or do it off the grid. Don't let some bullshit happen that inhibits you of your work and study because believe me they'll just persecute you and throw you out without asking any questions or any human decency. They're cash vampires with little to no interest in the betterment of your life.
So yeah, they'll see your midget porn code.
As an alumnus to several universities, I haven't paid for M$ office ever, plus I think you can install it on five devices.
Take off the tin-foil hat - life is so short :D
then don't. this is a ploy to make you familiar, comfortable, and ultimately dependent on M$ software/services.
Create a 999GB file of random bits, and upload it as "encrypteddata.bin" to your account... just to waste their cloud storage space.
LOL, a lovely idea. XD
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I'd think it unlikely that the college has access to view your OneDrive storage, unless they mount it as a drive when you use the college computers? Then I guess it may be possible but I feel that it isn't their intention. Most of the time it's a win-win because your college doesn't have to provide as much storage/back-up space and Microsoft are likely to get your paid-for subscription after college.
You could ask the Microsoft support for that.
You could send emails to the college IT teams from other colleges and ask them whether they have admin access to students onedrive storage, try nondenominational colleges.
Both should give you an answer to your question. I would keep the VPS though. What are you paying at the moment? I have 2 cores 5,8 Gig of RAM and 500 GB HDD for 6,99€ / month (7,50$) it does not have backups though.
Afterthought:
Office 365 for Business has an admin interface. It is entirely thinkable that the college IT has access to it. On the other hand it is entirely possible that the college only provides a list of approved users to Microsoft.
Thanks for your afterthought too.
As for the VPS
WOAH, which service are you using? ATM I'm paying $10 for 1 core, 2 gigs of ram, and 250 GB of storage.
This. Though its not my main OS, if i do need it I have Windows 10 (plus 8, server, and others), office (2016/365), older versions, xp (i think is still there). basically untill they remove the service.
i sometimes worry that this community is prone to encouraging paranoia outside the realms of "probably don't upload nudes to cloud services", which is entirely reasonable. i thought about making a thread for a discussion, but i don't think it would last.
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Can confirm. I have been paranoid ever since I joined.
Your college can't look at your data because it's stored onto Microsoft's servers. Also, in my case, Microsoft given out One Drive Business and I don't think they would modify the way it works just to give universities the possibility to peak into their students cloud storage. I think you can be as safe as Microsoft is.
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I use https://contabo.de/ but unless you understand ze German I dont zink zey vill do business wiz you.
Their cheap and cheerful VPSs are basically desktop PCs on shelves. No UPS, no Backup. But their CPUs are 3930Ks (surprisingly) so single core performance is not too bad.
But I'd think that there are some decent VPS offers around in the US.