As someone that works in a large University, I can tell you this is NOT common at all. Last year a faculty member here had a heart attack and was out of commission for awhile-it was almost impossible to get permission to access his email account and set an out of office response-we weren't allowed to 'see' his email (we had to pretend we didn't see any of his message). At my institution even staff email is not allowed to be read unless we have a subpoena.
