Discussing improving the application process

[LiamGingsjo]

Hi everyone,

Hi everyone, let's see...

The problem?

Some schools have multiple locations or campuses across a country, but share the same e-mail address format. I'm sure this is a very niche problem, but it makes verification and access to Github Education less likely for students of said schools, as the verification is more prone to failure.

What's it like at the moment?

Right now, the verification process tries to automatically determine the correct school based on the provided educational email address, but in the cases where a school has multiple locations, the verification will most likely fail due to the distance from where the local school location is compared to the one registered in Github's database.

There is still a way to get verified!
By telling Github the details manually during the application process, and giving the location its own distinct name in the information boxes, Github can still approve you. Infact, this is how I got approved. Benefit grant still pending...

What can be done about this?

I believe there are a few potential avenues to explore that could improve this situation for students at multi-campus institutions:

• Location Specificity in Application: The application form could be updated to include more granular location information. Instead of just a school name, perhaps a dropdown menu of campuses associated with that name could be provided. Alternatively, free-text fields for "Campus Name" or "Local Branch" could be added and clearly labeled as important for accurate verification.

• Database Enrichment: Github could proactively reach out to educational institutions known to have multiple campuses and work with them to register each location distinctly in their database. This would involve collecting specific address or location identifiers for each campus. Although it's very unlikely for this method to be viable.

• Improved Heuristic Logic: The automated verification process could be refined to consider potential multi-campus scenarios. Perhaps if an initial automatic check fails, the system could prompt the user with a "Does your school have multiple locations?" question, guiding them towards the manual verification path with clearer instructions.

• Clearer Communication and Troubleshooting: The documentation and error messages during the verification process could be more explicit about this potential issue. They are already extremely non-descript as they are and, providing a direct link or clear instructions on how to proceed with proper verification due to invalid information about multiple campuses would be beneficial.

Ultimately, a combination of these approaches could significantly streamline the verification process for students at these institutions, reducing frustration and ensuring more successful applications for Github Education benefits.

The drawbacks?

I have to admit that it's very likely that this would give more opportunity for those who try to abuse the Education Benefits to do so, and that it's unlikely that this'll actually make a change, but hey, at least we could try suggesting some ideas, not necessarily just for multi-campuses, but in general.