Why You Are Paying $400 a Year for Software Your University Provides for Free

The Best Buy Scam

You are a freshman preparing for college. You go to Best Buy to buy a new laptop. The salesman tells you: "You're going to need to write papers, so you have to buy a Microsoft Office 365 subscription for $70 a year."

You swipe your credit card. You just got scammed out of $70.

A month later, you decide you want to learn graphic design. You go to the Adobe website and sign up for the Creative Cloud for $20 a month ($240 a year).

You are hemorrhaging money for products you already own.

The Enterprise License

When you pay $20,000 a semester in tuition, a small fraction of that money goes to the university's IT Department. The IT Department signs massive "Enterprise Agreements" with global software companies. They pay millions of dollars so that every single student and faculty member gets blanket, free access to premium software.

The Big Three Freebies

Before you ever type your credit card into a software website, check your university's internal IT portal. You almost certainly have free access to:

Microsoft Office 365: 99% of American universities provide full, downloadable desktop versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for free. You just log in with your .edu email.

Adobe Creative Cloud: Many universities (especially those with journalism or design schools) offer the full Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator) for free. Even if it's not free, Adobe offers a massive 60% discount for students.

New York Times / Wall Street Journal: If a professor assigns an article and you hit a paywall, do not buy a subscription. Your university library has an enterprise subscription that bypasses the paywall for free.

The Strategy: Treat your .edu email address like a VIP Black Card. Never pay retail price for any digital product until you have thoroughly searched your university's "Software Downloads" intranet page.