
Why I don't give .edu discounts - AlchemistCamp
https://questinglog.com/why-I-dont-give-edu-discounts/
======
adamsvystun
The article talks about student discounts as if they are always verified by
'.edu' email address. Then the article criticizes '.edu' email address based
discounts and concludes that students discounts are bad.

I was a student outside the US in multiple countries. I don't remember any
product/software that offered an academic discount that I was not able to
access. Most companies accept local equivalents of addresses (like .edu.pl),
if not they often offer a possibility to send them your student ID for
identity verification. There is also an option to use internationally
recognized student cards - like ISIC, which can be gotten in more than 130
countries. Bottom line, academic discounts are useful for students across the
globe, who on average are broke.

~~~
ulucs
Ironically, it's the author's own privilege (living in the richest country in
the world) that renders them blind to this.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
I live in Taiwan. Being blocked from .edu discounts is a common complaint
here.

~~~
ulucs
So why not offer educational discounts with /edu\\.[a-z]+/ ? That blocks the
"privileged" US students, and lets the poorer countries off the hook. You're
still denying some opportunity to Taiwanese students with their .edu.tw
addresses

EDIT: Not to mention how US schools have made strides in recruiting students
from disadvantaged backgrounds, to the point that there were schools making
their students fake a troubled past so they could get better admissions. Do
those students' disadvantages just disappear because they are admitted?

~~~
PeterisP
A _few_ countries put educational institutions behind a .edu. second level
domain, the vast majority don't, their student emails are behind
[universityname].tld without any .edu. involved.

~~~
Already__Taken
our .UK ltd was owned and verified as an educational institution though if you
bothered to look up the whois. Seems like we already built a system to handle
this, not a tld

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GordonS
I guess it depends on the product.

I sell a B2B security product, and occasionally students or professors ask
about a discount - instead, I just give them a bunch of free licenses. Our
product has appeared in several papers/theses as a result. My understanding is
that Google ranks .edu links quite well, so it seems like a win-win.

~~~
jopsen
As student I recall a few products where getting a student license didn't
require any verification.

If the sign-up flow requires you click a button and check a checkbox, few
businesses will do that :)

If you see to end-users, some them might.. but still a low risk.

------
bootloop
I don't know what the product is here. But giving students a free license
allows them to explore your product and get them hooked so they might use it
in the professional world later on (and ask their employer to pay for it).

~~~
PeterisP
The post is talking about "an educational product" so in this regard students
seem like the main target audience, not a fringe group that may become the
target audience later, after their studies (which fits most other products).

~~~
AlchemistCamp
It's an educational product but not related to being a student at a
credential-granting institution. It's screencasts for people learning Elixir.

Most my customers are full-time software engineers, but not necessarily in
wealthy countries.

------
tasogare
> Nearly anything universities teach can be learned outside of a university,
> and usually faster.

Seems the writer has a personal bias against universities, because this
affirmation is so wrong on many levels. Sure lot of skills can be learned
outside them, yet some totally aren’t (medicine for example). This explains
more clearly why he doesn’t offer educational discounts (which by the way
doesn’t have to be tied to owning an .edu email since most institutions use
others TLDs anyway).

------
whereistimbo
Agree with the article, it is annoying that some student discount only applies
with .edu email address which means US-only accredited school. But a lot of
.edu email address owner is actually wealthy so...

~~~
phoe-krk
I have noticed that some of those programs also work for other countries'
TLDs, for instance, .edu.pl for Poland.

~~~
whereistimbo
TIL. Still there are only 17 countries with .edu as second level domain.
Unfortunately Indonesia doesn't have .edu second level domain, I'm stuck with
.ac.id

~~~
OJFord
In the UK we use .ac.uk, it was (when I was a student) my experience that
places that say '.edu discount' generally also accepted my '.ac.uk' \- I only
recall one that didn't, and that was resolved after a support email.

I wonder if .edu is more strictly controlled in America though, because I
still have an alumni.*.ac.uk address, which presumably anyone with automated
handling of it would still accept. (Unless I suppose that's also common over
there and they filter it out, and hope for no Mr Al Umnus from Scunthorpe.)

------
mufufu
> When you subsidize something, you get more of it. ... That leads to the
> question of what educational discounts subsidize. In effect, they subsidize
> going to very expensive universities.

I’m not sure I am following the point here. Are you suggesting people are
signing up to a 4 year university, taking out tens of thousands of dollars in
loans (as you mentioned) in order to get a student discount?

~~~
AlchemistCamp
In my specific case, the subsidy would be very, very small. In aggregate,
discounts, special offers, easier credit, grants, loans and a social
affordances add up.

At the margins, subsidies lead more people to spend four (or often five to
six) years of their life getting a credential. If you're interested in this
topic, I highly recommend Bryan Caplan's book: [https://www.amazon.com/Case-
against-Education-System-Waste-e...](https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-
Education-System-Waste-ebook/dp/B07T3QRNLC)

------
nottorp
How about educational discounts instead of .edu discounts?

There are students outside the US as well.

Not that i can figure out from that site what you're selling.

Edit: just because it may not be obvious: in countries with state paid higher
education the students can actually be poor.

~~~
maple3142
I think websites should be able to check for .edu.(country tld)

~~~
nottorp
That's not a rule unfortunately. If you want to do it, you prolly have to add
"email us if your educational institution isn't recognized" and add them one
by one when they show up.

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madushan1000
Not all that relevant to the article, but students in southeast Asia(I was in
a Sri Lankan university) rarely ever get access to any of these discounts. The
only educational discounts I remember getting are free licenses to some
Microsoft products, because the Microsoft regional manager for the country was
a friend of my department head, and github students pack.

We never got access to any Adobe, Mathematica, or any other math/engineering
related software. Only things we had access to was couple of half a decade old
dog slow computers in a "lab" with similarly old software versions with legit
licenses. Students used to use cracked versions of everything to get stuff
done.

------
auganov
> Who has a .edu email address? Generally it's only students, faculty and
> alumni of accredited US colleges. This roughly translates to "many of the
> most priviledged people in the world".

I'm pretty sure most sites do actually respect .edu equivalents in other
countries. Certainly seen .ac.uk work. And for most countries it's simply
.edu.<country tld>.

~~~
znpy
> I'm pretty sure most sites do actually respect .edu equivalents in other
> countries. Certainly seen .ac.uk work. And for most countries it's simply
> .edu.<country tld>.

No, they don't.

The .edu tld is one of those areas where the US govt still exercises monopoly
over a public resource (the dns space).

Here in italy for example, there is no such thing as .edu.it.

Most universities have their own regular .it dns zone.

~~~
Galanwe
Same here in France. Public uni had its own domain "univ-<city>.fr"

Never seen a French school/uni with .edu

~~~
bryanlarsen
Canadian universities named after places are generally u<place_name>.ca, (aka
ubc.ca, uwaterloo.ca) but those named after people aren't, like mcgill.ca,
queensu.ca, stfx.ca, carleton.ca.

------
AnonC
Maybe the next follow up post should be titled “Why I don’t give any
discounts” and explain all the factors that make it difficult, like
considering which country a person is in and purchasing power parity, and how
even that could not weed out people who can afford to pay but don’t want to.
/s

Got it. You don’t want to give discounts. It doesn’t need so many words to
explain it as if it’s a problem you can’t handle (when the truth is that
you’ve decided you won’t handle it).

~~~
AlchemistCamp
> _" like considering which country a person is in and purchasing power
> parity, and how even that could not weed out people who can afford to pay
> but don’t want to"_

I'm not sure where you got that impression.

In the article, I used purchasing parity discounts as a contrasting case. I
_do_ offer them and they're more generous than those of any other similar
offering I know of (including those for other languages).

------
runxel
This approach doesn't appear to be really smart. Actually more in the
contrary. While it depends on the product in general you should definitely
give students some discount, or even free stuff (if those are licenses).

Couple of reasons:

* You can leverage your product because you can hook students to it. If it is any good they will become attached and will enforce it later in the workplace (this happens because students will spend time in your software e.g.; they will see this time as an investment – you should, too!) generating a magnitude more than you "lost" in providing the discount in the first place. If you don't do that you have scared those people off forever.

* If you don't give discount or free licenses, they will just get it from shady forums anyway ;) So you don't get anything.

* Generate a positive feeling towards your brand. So much underestimated effect. If you've once damaged the attitude you just can't regain it, seriously.

Last comment: Please don't use .edu addresses as a only verifaction. There is
a world beyond the US, and they don't use that.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
> _" Generate a positive feeling towards your brand."_

I try to do this by having a generous freemium model. To the best of my
knowledge nobody in my space has put even 1/3 of the free content out onto
YouTube. Hopefully not offering extra discounts the rest of my tutorials won't
overwhelm that goodwill, but one never knows... Many experience entrepreneurs
also tell me that a freemium model at all is a mistake.

> _" Please don't use .edu addresses as a only verification. There is a world
> beyond the US, and they don't use that."_

Thank you!

------
g_p
It would be interesting to analyze this from the perspective of a country
where students don't pay privately for their own education (or at least it
isn't heavily normalized), where having such an email isn't necessarily a
proxy for being wealthy and having spent on an education.

I tend to think giving exposure of your product to students is valuable, but
that lifelong "student email accounts" probably go some way to breaking this.

There are websites where people will share student deals and how to get a
valid student email by enrolling in the cheapest possible distance learning
course, to avail themselves of the deal.

The question for the HN audience is if these users are more or less valuable?
They're willing to pay less, or seek a "discount" or "bargain", but likely
also sharing your name and raising awareness of it. Will they be more likely
than most to share the product with others because they got a "discount", and
then the others will end up just paying full price as they don't want to jump
through hoops and spend hours doing it?

~~~
cassepipe
Here are my two centimes from France where education is (comparatively to the
US) _free_ (Something like a three hundred euros fees per year whose two
thirds are a participation to be covered by health insurance (student health
insurance is notorously inefficient btw)). Even here, although university is
open to everyone most people who attend it and dont drop out are privilidged
in some way, the content of the two first year is generally a bit poor and it
acts a waiting room to select the very few research oriented minds. There are
all kind of special public schools that act the same way the ivy league does
in terms of reproducing social elites. To the point : Even here, I think the
argument of the article still stand. Student is a very broad category and that
emcompasses rich and poor and I agree that discounts should be revenue based
and not category based.

~~~
throwaway4889
Means testing is stupid and the bureaucracy involved to check whether the free
lunch does not go to the _undeserving_ (god forbid) is often not worth it,
compared to just giving everyone something (and recouping it through
taxation).

------
josh_fyi
To the extent that these discounts target students at accredited universities
in rich countries (and not non-accredited schools or pool countries), the
discounts achieve exactly the goal of hooking low-income students who will
later have greater buying power (personally or through their work).

------
josh_fyi
Alumni have edu addresses too, and there are always more alumni than students;
and the alumni need professional tools more than students. So, these discounts
might be going mostly to alumni. The discounts are _not_ a chance to get a
student hooked before they enter the real world.

~~~
ugexe
Yes the article explicitly states that alumni, whom the author consider a
privileged class, also have .edu emails

------
cobbzilla
> A less direct form of price discrimination is to create a slightly different
> product that would only appeal to customers with more money. In software, we
> see this often with features revolving around team management, accounting
> and compliance.

Um, if the feature set is different, that's a _different product_ , not price
discrimination.

Price discrimination is charging different customers different amounts for the
_same product_.

I gave up after reading that.

[edit] OK I scanned the rest, and found a section titled "Hypocracy" \-- is
that a system of rule by the underclass? Or perhaps the author meant
"Hypocrisy"... there's a bad joke somewhere in here given that the topic
involves higher education.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
[https://www.economicshelp.org/microessays/pd/price-
discrimin...](https://www.economicshelp.org/microessays/pd/price-
discrimination/)

> _" One way firms practise price discrimination is to offer slightly
> different products as a way to discriminate between consumers ability to
> pay."_

~~~
cobbzilla
Sorry, that explanation is just plain wrong.

A car maker who offers a "GT" upgrade to their standard car model is not
engaging in price discrimination, they're selling two different products.

Selling movie tickets cheaper to students and the elderly is price
discrimination. It's literally the same product, with a different price.

~~~
perl4ever
This depends on the semantics of the word "same".

With modern technology, let's say you have a car with a higher trim package,
and for a simplified example, let's say the upgrade is the radio. A
manufacturer can and will make a new plastic trim piece with different
buttons, but install the exact same radio behind it in all cars. The
difference will be in a software or firmware switch that makes the radio
behave differently.

To the customer, it seems like a different product, but to someone who
understands how it's done, who is selling it, it's not really.

I think people find it useful to classify this as price discrimination.

This is an example that comes to mind, by the way, because I once bought a
(base model) car that used exactly this method, only the switch was
misconfigured so the buttons acted like the expensive trim.

------
m000
TL;DR: Although a lot of people with a .edu address are broke, we can't make
sure that everyone with a .edu address is broke. And there are surely people
somewhere in the world poorer than anyone with a .edu address. So nobody gets
a discount.

"Because I don't want to." would be more frank and straightforward than all
those made up arguments.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
I'm not a huge fan of others limiting educational discounts to only people
with .edu email addresses, either.

It's due the reasons I covered in "all those made up arguments", as you call
them.

~~~
m000
So, you're bitter because you didn't get educational discounts just because
you live in Taiwan. Because of this, you decided to not give .edu discounts.
I.e. you turn against the "privileged" .edu students rather than the companies
that were too lazy to extend discounts to non-US universities. That's just a
misguided grudge (to say the least).

What do you really expect to gain business-wise by publicizing a misguided
personal grudge with a poorly written post? You don't mention you live in
Taiwan. You don't even mention that you give discounts to non-US universities.
So, in the end, you come out no better than those "other" companies. The post
doesn't work as a publicity stunt either, as you make no mention of the
product you're selling.

Why not opaquely offer e.g. a 10% discount to .edu emails and a %40 discount
to less-"privileged" universities. No explanations needed, you just receive a
discount code in your email address. No drama, no grudges, no need to write
lengthy posts and argue with strangers on HN.

Disclosure: Never had a .edu email.

------
hijp
I'm a student, I'm broke, I like the convenience of using the .edu for
discounts. Sometimes I run into places that use a third party verification
service that asks for a picture of a student id with current semester visible.

But if the problem is equity, then I like Sam Harris's model of offering his
content free, no questions asked, for a year. I subscribed to his podcast this
way and received an automated response immediately with the rss feed.

 _I never want money to be the reason why someone can’t get access to my
digital content. If you really can’t afford a monthly or annual subscription
to SamHarris.org, just contact us, and we’ll give you a 1-year membership for
free._

~~~
AlchemistCamp
I respect that model, too. He's also the first major podcaster I know of to go
to a subscription only-model, years before Substack even existed.

His case is somewhat unusual, though. He's not trying to maximize revenue and
it much more focused on spreading his ideas (and meditation training) as
widely as possible. It would be astounding if Sketch, Jetbrains or similar
companies copied it.

------
fomine3
Totally agree. University isn't the only signal for need to be discounted. I
think that JetBrains' license style (company pay more but individual can use
products for work) is reasonable.

------
ldeangelis
Maybe leveraging the Github developer student pack could work. Sign in with
Github, and if you have the student developer pack you get a discount.

------
jankotek
Are people actually using .edu for email? It is gone once you leave uni.

