GitHub Education Student Discount Application Error - Valid School-Issued Student Email Domain Not Recognized

[zzo01]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

School Email/Domain Issues

Hi everyone,

Hello GitHub Education Team and Community,
I’m a full-time enrolled student from an accredited public higher education institution in China. I’m reaching out for help with a persistent error that blocks me from submitting my GitHub Education Student Developer Pack application, even though I’m using a valid, official school-issued student email address.
When I try to submit my student discount application, the process fails immediately, and I receive the following full error message:
There was an error creating the discount request. Errors: Discount request could not be created. Discount request errors: We require applicants to use a school-issued email address to apply.
The email I used for the application is an official student email exclusively issued by my university, under our school's dedicated student email subdomain. The root domain of this email is our institution's official edu.cn domain — the edu.cn suffix is the exclusive, government-verified domain for accredited educational institutions in China, which can only be registered and used by qualified higher education establishments. This student email subdomain is reserved solely for currently enrolled full-time students of our institution, and is used for all official campus services, academic affairs and student management on campus.
I have double and triple-checked that the email address was entered correctly, with no typos, spelling mistakes, or extra spaces. I have also completed basic troubleshooting steps including clearing browser cache and cookies, using incognito/private browsing mode, and switching to a different browser, but the error remains unchanged. My student status is valid and active, and if needed, the GitHub Education team can contact me directly via my GitHub account to request and verify any relevant supporting documentation.
It appears that the GitHub Education application system is not recognizing our institution's official student email subdomain as a valid school-issued domain, which is causing this application failure. I sincerely hope the GitHub Education team can help look into this domain recognition issue for standard Chinese higher education student email formats, resolve the system error, and guide me on how to successfully complete my student discount application.
Thank you so much for your time and support. Any help or guidance from the team, or from community members who have encountered similar issues, would be greatly appreciated.

[PrimeNewsDaily]

It sounds like the validation system may not be recognizing certain regional academic domains, which is frustrating given your thorough checks similar to how niche services like london pet quarantine coordination services sometimes face strict system filters despite valid credentials.
You might need direct support escalation or manual verification, as this seems more like a backend domain recognition limitation than a user-side issue.

[pauldev-hub]

Hi @zzo01 ,

You're posting in the right place and your situation is clearly documented well. The issue here is that GitHub's automated system sometimes doesn't recognize certain Chinese university subdomains even when they're legitimately under the .edu.cn root — this is a known gap in their verification system, not a problem with your email being invalid.

Here's what to do:

Step 1 — Raise a support ticket directly
Go to https://support.github.com and submit a ticket. Explain exactly what you wrote here:
Your email is officially issued by your university
It's under a .edu.cn subdomain which is government-regulated
The system is blocking you despite using a valid school email

Paste the exact error message in the ticket
Once you submit, a real GitHub Education team member will review it and email you back directly. Response usually comes within 2–5 business days. This is the most reliable path because a human can manually whitelist your domain or override the automated block — something the self-serve portal simply cannot do.

Step 2 — Attach supporting documents in the ticket
Along with your ticket, attach:
A screenshot of your university email inbox (showing the from/to address clearly)

Your 学信网 (CHSI) enrollment verification from https://www.chsi.com.cn — this is government-backed proof and carries a lot of weight
A screenshot of the error you're getting

Step 3 — Also try emailing education@github.com directly
Send the same information via email as a backup. Sometimes this reaches the team faster than the ticket portal.

You're not doing anything wrong — this is purely GitHub's system not having your subdomain in its recognized list yet. A human review will fix it.
Hope you get it sorted soon! If this helped, feel free to mark it as the accepted answer so others facing the same .edu.cn domain issue can find the solution easily! 😊