Academic email linked to deleted GitHub account — unable to apply Student Developer Pack on new account

[vc82bca18-wq]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Verification Help & Guidance

Hi everyone,

Hello,

I am currently a student and I am trying to use the GitHub Student Developer Pack with my college email.

My academic email was previously used with my old GitHub account, vc82bca18-spec, where I had obtained GitHub Education benefits.

Unfortunately, I lost access to that account after losing my two-factor authentication method, and I later deleted the account.

I have now created a new GitHub account, vc82bca18-wq, using the same college email.

When I try to apply for the Student Developer Pack, GitHub says that my academic email has already been used to obtain an academic discount on vc82bca18-spec.

Since the old account has been deleted, what is the correct way to resolve this and use my existing student eligibility with my current account?

I can provide proof of current student status if needed.

Thank you.

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[nirav-gajera]

This is a Support case, not something that'll resolve on its own — a deleted account doesn't automatically release the email from GitHub Education's system, so the block sticks around even though vc82bca18-spec is gone.

Contact GitHub Supportdirectly (choose "Other" as the category, since this doesn't fit the standard billing/technical buckets) and explain exactly what you told us: your old account vc82bca18-spec used this academic email for Education benefits, you lost 2FA access to it, you deleted it, and now your new account vc82bca18-wq is blocked because the system still sees the email as already used. Include both usernames in the ticket so they can look up the old account's history directly.

This is a manual fix on their end — there's no self-service way to unlink an email from an account that no longer exists. Worth mentioning the 2FA lockout too, since that's the reason you couldn't just resolve this on the old account before deleting it, and it explains why this needs a manual override rather than the normal unlink flow.