When I was in college, Microsoft had DreamSpark, which was a similar kind of thing (use your school email, get a bunch of free licenses to VS, SQL Server, etc).

When I was in college, Microsoft had DreamSpark, which was a similar kind of thing (use your school email, get a bunch of free licenses to VS, SQL Server, etc). I don't know if they still do it, but especially in those days, it was great, because the free Express editions hadn't quite come out yet, and when they did, they were pretty gimped. Using a real version of Visual C++ was head and shoulders better than trying to fight with Eclipse, or CodeBlocks, or DevC++ in those days.