Educational discounts fading away?

I was surprised to see that the corporate discount I am eligible through my employer is SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER than the discount from the grad school I attend in NYC through their apple edu store.

To understand the educational discount, consider its real purpose: it is designed to "grow" a lifelong consumer of Apple products. It is not designed to saturate a market; it is not designed to make educational institutions happy; it is not designed to make a profit, even. It's purpose is to get lifelong mindshare which leads to marketshare.

In fact, and I wish I could find the source for my thinking here, the original Mac was priced significantly lower in the educational market than in the retail market for the specific purpose of growing Mac users. (Sidenote: We got our first Mac in 1984 through the educational purchase program as my dad was a professor at a major university. The unintentional side effect that Steve didn't plan on at the time was that he got mindshare for the professor's kids!)

Now, consider today's educational landscape and ask the question, What does Apple gain by offering a discount on the TV? Does it build mindshare among college students? Maybe, but not likely--that market penetration is already there with the iPod. Does it create purchases at the iTMS? "Poor" college students buying anything if it's not incredibly cheap or free? I doubt it. Creating a halo-purchased Mac? I'd have to guess that that decision is more likely to be influenced by the college and its push or mandate for one platform or the other, something that really does happen, or by the parents paying the bills, something that also really does happen. Also, the TV is more likely to be an accessory to that computer than the iPod is. And, without a software investment to preserve, there's no reason that the college student won't buy a Slingbox after graduation because, as I hypothesized before, there won't be much legal content that needs to be preserved on the replacement Slingbox.

Compare that question to, What does Apple gain by offering a discount on the Macintosh? Does it build mindshare among college students? Absolutely. Does it create future purchases? Absolutely--wouldn't want to waste all that software, after all. Is there something to be gained by offering an EDUdiscount on the Mac? You betcha'.

Another poster hypothesized that the TV was probably being sold at razor-thin margins and that would preclude offering any kind of discount. I somehow doubt that the profit margins on this item are that thin and offer the (Product)red iPod as an example of an item where Apple gives away margin (5% or 4%, model-dependent). And there is no educational discount for this item--or any other iPod, by the way. I'd venture a guess that Apple just feels that it doesn't buy them anything to give an educational discount, whereas it buys them positive public opinion to give a "feel good" discount with the (Product) red iPod.

[At one point, Apple did EDUdiscount iPods, but that discount appears to have disappeared completely. I might be missing something, though.]

OK, so let's look at the discount (or lack thereof) from another viewpoint: Does the lack of an EDU discount necessarily hurt the EDU community?

For the most part, I'd have to say that the answer is probably "No." Consider the various segments of that market. First, there are the institutions themselves, and that's primarily divided into two segments, the K-12 and the college/university/etc. markets. Then there are the personal participants in each community, namely the students, faculty and staff of each market. I'll call them "EDUsumers."

Now, one can certainly argue that the college/university market doesn't deserve much of a discount seeing as how these institutions are businesses--non-profit, in most cases, but businesses nonetheless--and how they charge their customers (students) based on their costs. As tuitions have been on the rise faster than the CPI and other indicators, one might argue that they have even been a bit greedy, unwisely managed, or something sinister like that, and can certainly afford the gosh-darned hardware that they want or need.

You might also argue that the K-12 market deserves a discount as these institutions are solely funded by the taxpayer's dollar (public schools are, anyway) and are severely underfunded and need the discount to implement Apple-centric product solutions for their technology needs.

But both of these arguments are moot. If you look at the the Apple Store for Education routing page (http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/routingpage.html), you discover that institutions are treated differently and separately from the EDUsumer. And unless you are able to and can go forward with creating a purchase proposal for one, ten, or 100 TVs and let the details drip into the In

Barkin is right... Apple does offer educational pricing on MOST of their products - all computers (it varies between 5-15%), and certain Apple products, and many software products.

The iPod educational discount was discontinued in September 2006 when the new revision of the iPods came out. Apple lowered the selling price of the iPods for everyone making it more affordable for consumers.

If the Apple TV (and possibly the iPhone) isn't discounted for education, Apple probably has a reason. If they see that it's affecting their sales, then it'll probably change.

The interesting thing is that the developer discount applies to [Apple]TV.

I wonder if Apple realizes how many students buy Macs because of the discount. That was the reason many of my friends and I all bought MacBooks. That said, I can see why apple wouldn't offer a discount on the Apple TV and possibly the iPhone- they're not directly related to education (unless texting in class is your thing).

I think we are missing a point here. What are schools going to connect the AppleTV to? Their brand new 42 in. LCD or Plasma displays. In a few select schools maybe. Other wise they better hope they have some newer projectors that will work with it, because their old TV's won't

Seeing as they introduced the new airport base station the same day, but quietly, and it has the discount taken off of the price, I don't think that the discounts are going away any time soon. The Apple TV isn't really a necessity though, no matter how many wonderful applications of the device you can conceive of. But, maybe the price will go down once it is no longer on pre-order, or once prices drop in general?

I am a teacher (middle school) and several of our faculty use iPods for various reasons. I use one in my English class when discussing lyrics as poetry. Many universities are now offering podcasted classes (yes, parents, you are paying $26,000+ a year so your son/daughter can sit on the couch, swill beer, and not actually have to go to a class.) The educational discount is important to us folks in the EDU world, I just wish it were actually a bit of a better deal.

Ed discounts are no big thing. Like Quix stated, go elsewhere and still get the same price as an Ed discount, but you might get it without shipping fees. For students, if you are careful where you order it, no sales tax. As a former teacher, I could get the Ed discount, but found it cheaper to order online. Same price as the discount, but no shipping fees and no sales tax.

I totally aggree, if it weren't for the student discount i'd never have been able to afford my macpro, in my course we do alot of video editing and rendering on this thing is FAST, so convinient when we lazy students leave projects to the last min! I hope they don't drop the discount on certain products. iPod's come in very handy as a portable hard drive for large files also, so i'd argue they should keep the discount on them too.