I really appreciate Github doing this, so kudos to them.

While I'm no longer a student myself, I don't think cost is the main prohibitive factor for students. The fundamental tools I use for my side projects - Atom, Bitbucket and Heroku - are available for free. The other services are nice to have, but seem to be much more niche.

I think the prohibitive factor is the perception that coding is hard and complex for regular folks, and is only easy for the few born with innate ability.