Apple Education Discount Loophole Is No More

Apple's discount for university students, teachers, and staff used to allow anyone to claim it, but the company has tightened restrictions and closed the longstanding loophole.

The change was spotted on Reddit by siddharthsure, who noted that Apple's education store has begun requiring student or educator status verification through UNIDAYS. The education store itself can't even be accessed until verification is provided. In addition, the discount is being limited to one device per year. While verification has been the norm in other countries, this is a new development for the US.

Previously, anyone could claim to be a student or educator and receive the discount with no verification needed. Instead, Apple would sometimes check random discounted purchases for validity and charge the difference if eligibility was determined to be invalid. It also didn't limit the discount to a specific number of items—so long as you bought it from the education store, you got it.

Many Reddit users have been keen to point out that it's still possible to find MacBooks and other equipment at a discount from other authorized retailers. In some circumstances, it's allegedly even cheaper than using the student discount directly through Apple. Especially during "back to school" sales and the like.

However, this approach does have its own limitations as the sale prices only apply to stock hardware. So if you need specific components or memory requirements, you might still have to go through Apple.