Millions of students around the globe can now access Microsoft Office at no extra charge if they attend a school with an organization-wide license. Microsoft is touting the announcement as a free offering to students although they are of course in effect paying for the license as part of their tuition fees.
The software is free of charge for eligible students, but in order to qualify "the student must attend a school that has purchased Office organization-wide for all faculty/staff via the Microsoft Volume Licensing program." Before the upgrade on Feb. 23 schools had to grant individual licenses to each individual but now the students and teachers can sign up online themselves to access the software.
Microsoft launched the scheme in the US in Sept. 2014, but has now rolled out the service worldwide. According to a statement from the company, millions of students in Hong Kong can now access Office 365 as well as millions of others enrolled in schools across every continent.
Every new eligible student will get:
The latest version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access and Publisher installed on up to five PCs or Macs and up to five mobile devices like iPad, Android and Windows tablets.
1TB of storage on OneDrive to store and share documents across devices.
Office Online for in-browser editing, collaboration and co-authoring
On Feb. 11, Microsoft gave genuinely free access to all 1.1 million New York City public school pupils, who are getting access to the software under the same plan. They effectively offered a free license to the New York Public School system.
However, Microsoft is hardly doing this out of the goodness of its own heart. Microsoft Office is no longer the dominant force it was in the '90s. More and more schools and businesses are using web-based software like Google Docs, which are already available free of charge, to create and share documents. If you can get every kid in New York City used to writing with your word processors and spreadsheets it could create a lifetime habit.
To take advantage of the new service eligible students and teachers can enroll at office.com/getoffice365 and office.com/teachers.
