[maximgsaini]

Awesome service guys. The following criticism is not for github, but for our culture as a whole. I cannot get myself to agree with how our culture has come to describe a 'student'. An example would be the following:

"If you're a student aged 13+ and enrolled in degree or diploma granting course of study, the GitHub Student Developer Pack is for you. All you need is a school-issued email address, valid student identification card, or other official proof of enrollment"

So I need to pay money to a big institution to be considered a student? Many 'students' would probably be in a better financial situation than a non-'student' who is trying to learn. Somehow 'education' has turned into a tool for passing on privilege.

I do agree this pack is not meant for everyone. And I also agree that these guys would find it hard to differentiate between a real learner and one who is not. But I'm amazed they didn't think about linking it with a coursera course or something. Anyways, I've spent 10 minutes thinking about this and they've probably spent 10 weeks. They've done more research, I might be missing something.

[chrisan]

> Many 'students' would probably be in a better financial situation than a non-'student' who is trying to learn. Somehow 'education' has turned into a tool for passing on privilege.

Without that, how would they validate who is a student vs not? I know nothing of Go but want to learn. Am I not a 'student'?

I understand what you are saying, but without being an actual verifiable student they would be giving this away to the world

Further, with all of the thousands of dollars saved by not being a traditional student, surely there is some money for these services out of pocket (not all of which are 100% required to learn)

[maratd]

> Without that, how would they validate who is a student vs not?

What? Why would they need to?

Those "perks" are only appealing to somebody who's learning or a hobbyist. They are absolutely worthless to a professional. I will burn through them in a week.

Github is just trying to market this to kids. It has nothing to do with learning or providing a better value proposition. It's all about hooking them into your brand early. Nothing wrong with that, but that's what it is.

[kendallpark]

> It's all about hooking them into your brand early.

Yup. That's how Amazon Prime got me. Free Prime for students? Well, four years later I'm hooked and pay full price.

Ingenious marketing strategy.

[pbhjpbhj]

Well it's worked for many years for Microsoft too.

Adobe, do it as well I think, though they're close to a monopoly with Photoshop.

Have people become so accustomed to using your software that it's easier for them to pay for it than to transition to another company's products or indeed to go with FOSS alternatives.

It's the drug dealer model: first hit is free.

[pokpokpok]

their point is that this is a package meant to financially aid those in the process of learning, but it's restricted to learners who are already privileged enough to be part of the expensive system (maybe some of them through grants or loans).

Isn't it worth mentioning that a package meant to give people access to expensive learning resources isn't available to those who need it most?

[judk]

It's meant to get future paying customers to use their stack.

It's not a charity. The open source hosting tools (which github offers) are more charitable.

[grayclhn]

It's treating "student" as the individual's current occupation, which seems reasonable. But if you are conducting your own unaffiliated independent study that eats up most of your workday, you can probably get in touch with them and get a waiver.

[afschwartz]

You absolutely can! I used to teach an informal free class on CSS (http://magicofcss.com). Even though I wasn’t a teacher at any actual school GitHub kindly gave me and my students access to free private repos for educational use. (See https://education.github.com/guide for more information.)

[bdcravens]

I think that's a filter more than anything else. You know they'd get hammered otherwise. Even Coursera or the like wouldn't be a good filter, since anyone can sign up. Perhaps they could have a filter based on completed courses through the various online options (Coursera, Code School, Treehouse, etc)

[maximgsaini]

> Perhaps they could have a filter based on completed courses through the various online options (Coursera, Code School, Treehouse, etc)

Couldn't agree more!!

[akx]

> So I need to pay money to a big institution to be considered a student?

In the US, I guess you do.

Here in Finland, all uni/polytechnic/what-have-you students get a school-issued email address and student identification card, and tuition is free.

So I guess your criticism is for the US culture? :)

[hk__2]

Same in France. I paid €5 for my fifth and last year of higher education that started this September, and I get €250/mo during 10 months to help me pay for food/housing/books. Students in more confortable situations paid 450€ and don’t get any money during the year, but that’s still pretty cheap.

[thekingofspain]

Small tidbit: In English, it's spelled with an M, not an N! Comfortable :) But you probably knew that already.

[hk__2]

Thanks, that’s a typo :)

[maximgsaini]

It is not only the US which abides by this culture, much of the world does. Northern Europe comes across as a stark exception, though!

[Cshelton]

I want to emphasize here a common misconception of 'free'. Your education is not free, some may even argue it is more expensive than the US system. Myself included. You pay an extraordinary amount of taxes for the 'free' education. You pay for it regardless if you decide to attend university or not. Letting the 'rich' pay for it is not an economic solution either. Hence the outrage in the US of moving toward the European socialist model, most do not want anything close to it.

[sampo]

> You pay an extraordinary amount of taxes for the 'free' education.

I once made a rough comparison, in the 60k–100k yearly salary range, for tax rates between Finland and California. As far as I remember, they were quite similar.

Just, in Finland you get (almost) free education, (almost) free health care, better public transportation and worse national defense.

I'd be happy to do this again, if you (or someone) provide the California numbers, I'll do Finland.

[Cshelton]

Yes yes...Finland and California are the same everything. So interchangeable that one could live in CA or Finland and have the same life style....no. Cost != value. On that though...worse national defense...you realize the US has the largest armed militia in the world...the people. Good luck with Russia!

[Luc]

> I want to emphasize here a common misconception of 'free'.

You've blown my mind. I need to think this through carefully, but your reasoning may very well apply to health-care too.

Thanks for setting us straight. I'll be sure to vote for privitization next opportunity!

EDIT: Sarcasm!

[dragonwriter]

> I need to think this through carefully, but your reasoning may very well apply to health-care too.

I haven't seen the numbers on education, but certainly no OECD country has healthcare more expensive than that in the US. Heck, many pay less in public funds than the US, even though the private healthcare costs in the US are a little bit higher than the public costs -- and this was true before the Affordable Care Act, just to forestall anyone who might blame "ObamaCare".

[Cshelton]

Let's go through some simple logic here...other countries have less expensive healthcare, they pay less in public redistributions for healthcare, and that equates to a better healthcare system? If I'm a skilled doctor, from an microeconomic stand point, I'm going to work in a place that has higher compensation. You seem to go under the assumption that less expensive = better...

[wtallis]

He's not assuming any such absurd implication. He's assuming (quite charitably) that you are not completely ignorant of the basic facts of the healthcare debate: that the US system is vastly more expensive than any other country and produces sub-par outcomes when compared to other developed countries. (In the US, the rich can get top-notch healthcare, but this does little to bring up the averages.)

[dragonwriter]

No, other developed countries have generally comparable results in concrete outcome measurements to the US, as well as lower (per capita and per GDP) public + private costs, and better access (universal, generally) to non-emergency care.

Additionally, several also have lower public + private costs than the US's public costs (which in turn are lower than US private costs).

[Cshelton]

Congratulations! You successfully responded with negative sarcasm and absolutely no constructive criticism or counter points. You sir are the winner of the internets! Enjoy your day.

[LordIllidan]

I am from Malta, where students get paid to attend University, in the form of stipends and government grants.

It can stand to improve, but I see nothing wrong with the idea. You still have to pay taxes anyway, why not spend them on the common good?

[enraged_camel]

>>Hence the outrage in the US of moving toward the European socialist model, most do not want anything close to it.

"Most" do not want anything close to it, or the rich do not want anything close to it?

I'm absolutely certain that most people in the US would vote for free healthcare and education. The problem of course is that politicians and special interest groups make sure things never get to that stage.

[Dewie]

This isn't just being incredibly pedantic[1], it is more importantly incredibly insulting. I assure you, most people are intelligent enough to realize that money doesn't grow on trees, that the "free" education is funded by someone, and that it is (in most cases) funded by them the people, indirectly. Indeed, this is not some secret that "Europe" is blissfully ignorant to, and that they would abolish the second that they finally put the pieces together, perhaps aided by enlightened individuals such as yourself.

[1] "Free" in this context means that it is subsidized by the government, and it is probably funded by some taxation. Do you have a better word for it, that isn't impractically wordy and awkward? Then convince us to use that.

[remarkEon]

> So I need to pay money to a big institution to be considered a student? Many 'students' would probably be in a better financial situation than a non-'student' who is trying to learn.

This points out sort of the paradox we have here...it's argued that you should just "learn to code," but then they're requiring here that in order to do this you need to be part of some larger engine of learning that my or may not have anything to do with what you're trying to learn in the first place. So which is it?

[smeyer]

In order to sign up for this student pack, you need to be part of a larger institution. You can still learn to code without signing up for this student pack.

[neom]

I've thought about this a lot generally. Mostly because I went to college in Canada and didn't have a .edu email address, made it really hard for me to get these kinds of discounts. Plus, who says you need to be in traditional education anyway.

If anyone wants the DO portion of this and are not enrolled in traditional education but learning code full time and thinks they should get it regardless: email me: [e-mail]

[dwild]

You contact the platform and you tell them. That's what happened with GitHub and Jetbrains, my university domain wasn't accepted by them, some students contacted them and both times they were fast to react. Sure it's harder than with an .edu email address but it's far from being an issue.

[neom]

Sadly I can only do something about the DigitalOcean part, but like I said above, if anyone wants to make the case I'm happy to apply the credit for those enrolled in the full time study of code/serverz/whatever. :)

[jackpirate]

Getting an email through a community college doesn't scream of privilege to me.

[scarecrowbob]

For people working on the very low end of wages, even having time off attend very inexpensive classes can be quite a cost.

[Tehnix]

>Many 'students' would probably be in a better financial situation than a non-'student' who is trying to learn. Somehow 'education' has turned into a tool for passing on privilege.

What? You mean to say that students, who spend all their time studying (and pay tuition in some countries), are in a better financial position than people who has either free time and don't pay tuition, or has a full-time job?

They give it to students because that the reality is that students often don't have any spare money for tools, but they do indeed need/use them for their education etc.

[trwhite]

Did you consider those who don't have the time to work a full time job? I'm interning as a Junior Webdev for 9 hours a day on no pay, and college is out of reach (financially) for me, although admittedly I'm probably a minority. It's not surprising that many of my students friends do have alot of excess cash though, considering that student living costs are relatively low and they often benefit from a wide range of discounts on amenities like internet etc.

[chudi]

Latam has lots of public (free) Universities, they all give you some sort of email.

Besides you need some easy way to check if someone is a student or not and the most easy way to delegate this job is to require an email from an institution.

[joshvm]

If you really want to 'abuse' student status, you can enroll in night classes somewhere and normally you can claim a free .edu or .ac.uk (or whatever) account. Ultimately there must be a differentiator so that not everyone can sign up and bankrupt the generous companies offering the discounts.