Frustrated

[coder-2007]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Evidence and Image Capture

Hi everyone,

I have uploaded my school id, evidence of employment, re-appointment letter for the next 2 years, and a few other pieces of evidence to prove that I am employed as educator at York College (CUNY) and I keep getting declined. I used my york email as alternate email on the account. What does it take to get this approval? I don't know what other evidence I can produce and yes, I verified my York email. I am starting to think this education copilot license for educators is just a scam.

[coder-2007]

My issue has been resolved, I figured out that it was matching the school name I picked with student email account domains and not the educators which are slightly different. However, there was strangely a department in my school listed which matched the educator email domain and that has worked.

[xniperbuilds]

That's genuinely frustrating, and you're not alone — a lot of legitimate educators hit this wall.
A few things that actually make a difference:
The email verification matters more than the documents. For most education programs (GitHub included), the .edu email being set as your primary account email — not just an alternate — is often what triggers approval. Try swapping it: go to Settings → Emails, set your york.cuny.edu address as primary, then reapply.
Document format is picky. They want something that clearly shows:

Your name
The institution name
That you're currently active (dated within the last year, ideally)

A re-appointment letter is good, but sometimes they want something that looks more like a formal employment verification or a faculty contract page. If your college HR can issue a dated "verification of employment" letter on letterhead, that tends to clear it faster than a re-appointment letter alone.
What to actually do next:

Set @york.cuny.edu as your primary GitHub email (not just alternate)
Wait 24h, then resubmit — sometimes the system just needs to sync
If declined again, email education@github.com directly with your ticket number and ask a human to review it — the automated system has known issues with CUNY addresses specifically

The program is real, not a scam — but the approval pipeline is buggy and under-resourced. A direct email to their support team usually gets it resolved within a few days when the automated process keeps failing.