Academic pricing also applies to individual purchases by students, staff, and faculty. In-store, they ask for an ID. But they don't use any mechanism for online purchases, aside from attestation.

I think they used to use edu email addresses to confirm, but now that so many people have alumni emails, that would be useless (and not capture k12 students, whose email addresses typically cannot receive outside emails).

In the United States (population of 340 million):

* 86 million (27%) are under 21 and most of those are students. * Those people have parents, assume 2 parents per 2 children = 86 million parents (27%)

That means 55% of the US population is eligible for the cheaper rate before you even account for people getting secondary degrees, educators, and yes - the schools themselves.

EDIT: With education discount, in Canada, it's good price: $679 for base, $849 for Touch ID + 512 SSD.

--

$799 in Canada for the base model & $999 for the one with touchID & 512 GB ssd.

Looks like both models only come with 8gb ram.

Or a student, or a family member of a student.

Also these days Apple actually allows sales and discounts at retailers. I bet this will be on sale for $499 at Amazon or BestBuy before the end of the year.

Or a student, or a teacher. Individuals get edu pricing too...