I'm not saying that Google Voice isn't useful to students. I'm saying that students could have pretty much gotten an invite within a day even before this progra

I'm not saying that Google Voice isn't useful to students. I'm saying that students could have pretty much gotten an invite within a day even before this program just because the invite lag is pretty short. But it's easier to get people to blog, post to hacker news, etc. about a "special" program, so they more-or-less invented one.