Comment by g_p | Hacker News Reader

Comment by g_p | Hacker News Reader

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?

In germany, universities are funded by the government, but you basically need a grammar school degree ("Abitur") to get into one - there are other paths, but of almost three million students, only 60 000 don't have one. Additionally, if you want to study certain subjects, where there's a high demand, you need good grades. Both these rules favor students with upper class parents. The latter rule has an exception which somehow makes that even worse: You can sue to get a place in a university, for any subject, regardless of your grades, but this costs money, which again tilts the system in favor of students with upper class parents.

Bottom Line: Even if universities are funded by the government, students still tend to be privileged. Educational resources should rather offer discounts for everyone below a certain age.

I don't think there's any country where university education isn't a proxy for something like that.

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.

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).

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