[rurp]

A friend of mine had a similar experience when he was just learning. He accidentally racked up a large bill (for a student), contacted support, and they forgave the charges.

That's not to say that Amazon is being altruistic here, I think it just makes good business sense. Foregoing a few thousand dollars for even a tiny chance that a student's future self decides to use AWS for a multi-million spend project down the line is worth it.