The people suggesting .edu email address verification (especially fancy systems with 'alum' filtering) forget non-US colleges. One solution might be to use Fac

The people suggesting .edu email address verification (especially fancy systems with 'alum' filtering) forget non-US colleges. One solution might be to use Facebook Connect -- I'm not sure if you'd have access to all the data you need, but people on FB tend to be honest about this kind of personal info, FB maintains a comprehensive list of colleges (and requires email verification to join a college network), and for extra security you could perhaps restrict it to people with over 10 friends in the college network, to make it a bit harder to scam.