My school does not provide students with an educational email address, so I am unable to verify my student status using a school-domain email.

[YangZhiwei2026]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

School Email/Domain Issues

Hi everyone,

I have already submitted a physical proof of enrollment/student status issued by my school as required by GitHub Education. However, after submitting the document, the system still requires me to verify my status using a school email address.

Since my school does not provide educational email addresses, I am unable to complete this step.

Could anyone please advise me on how I should proceed? Is it possible to complete GitHub Education student verification using only the physical proof of enrollment, or is there another verification method available for students whose schools do not provide educational email addresses?

Thank you for your help!
When I tried to continue, I received the following error:

"There was an error creating the discount request. Errors: Discount request could not be created."

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[YangZhiwei2026]

[hoangperry]

You're not blocked by policy here — a school email is not a hard requirement. The docs are explicit that if your school doesn't provide email addresses, document-based proof is the fallback. What you're most likely hitting is a form-flow issue rather than an eligibility one:

1. In the application, after selecting your school, look for the option indicating you don't have a school-issued email (the flow only hard-insists on email verification when the selected institution record has an email domain registered — if someone at your school registered a domain historically, the form keeps demanding it even though students never got addresses).
2. If your institution's record has that stale domain attached, that mismatch can't be fixed from your side — report it through https://support.github.com/contact/education, stating that the school does not issue student email addresses, and include the proof of enrollment you already have. They can adjust the institution record / process the application on documents alone.
3. Meanwhile, make sure the basics are aligned so the document path succeeds when it's unblocked: full name on the enrollment proof matching your profile and billing name exactly, document dated within the current term, captured by camera rather than uploaded as a screenshot.

So: proceed on documents, and if the form physically won't let you past the email step, that's the thing to report — quote the exact screen text in the ticket.