The alliance that I'm referring to is the Microsoft Academic Alliance which allows any high school computer science department and computer science students to install Visual Studio. In addition, you get the following:
Three Microsoft e-Learning Library (MELL) collections:
- General Programming
- Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
- Programming in Visual Basic .NET
Teaching Tools CD
Student Tools CD
Teaching Tools Manual
Student Tools Manual
Introductory Kit
Monitored Newsgroups
MSDN Library
- Documentation
- Technical Articles
- Code Samples
- Access to the Member's Area of the Web site
- Private MSDN Academic Alliance newsgroups
- Additional "Members Only" special offers
- 2 Professional Technical Support incidents
My school has been a member of the Alliance and I can't say enough about the program. Some states have an agreement with Microsoft and you can get this for FREE! However, the costs for everyone else is $299.
There are three ways for students to obtain the software for their personal use.
- Member departments may make up to 50 copies of MSDN AA software for students to check-out from a library or lab. Students are required to return the physical media within a reasonable period of time.
- Member departments may put the software on a secure server and have students download directly from the server. If a department desires to utilize both methods, that is perfectly acceptable.
- Microsoft has partnered with e-academy to provide electronic software distribution for students and faculty free of charge.
Students must sign an agreement before they can download the software. The school administrator keeps track of the software and the agreements.
All in all, I've been very happy with this partnership.
Questions? Call 1-866-643-9421 or e-mail: msdnaa@microsoft.com