It was more the right to an 24/7 emergency loaner than any discount that made the purchase through school so desirable.
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This probably benefits only a few and only rarely. Also unlike in the old days, students now have their smartphones and tablets that could be used in such emergencies. A loaner for a few days without all the special custom setups, software, and the files they store locally, isn’t that useful under most circumstances, IMO.
My D had to get by with a friend’s old MacBook when her PC laptop died and dried the hard drive. S just went and bought himself a desk top with two monitors when his laptop started acting up. Both of my kids had sone warning things were amiss and able to save most data to hard drives.
They taught themselves to troubleshoot for themselves. It took maybe a month or two to get full refunds after both laptops died.
Neither of my kids bought laptops recommended by school and weren’t aware of any discounts they may have been able to get but were satisfied enough.
Thanks to all. Went with the MacBook Air M1. $899 at apple Education shop. Main reason was reliability.
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Yay! Great choice 
Good price too!
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May he write his resume for his first post-college graduation degree on it. Or maybe complete applications for grad school on it. 
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We are mostly an Apple ecosystem household and all the kids had Mac laptops by HS. Our HS even (redundancy in our case) supplies every student with a Macbook Air (part of their Covid equity solution in 2020). I only say all this to demonstrate a starting bias for Mac…
Despite all that our HS son researched on his own and instead asked for a MS Surface Laptop Studio and it’s been game changing for him. He never bothers using his old Mac or school Mac anymore, or his old Ipad. It (and others like it – there’s roughly similar 2-in-1’s from other brands) is perfect for students. He uses it as a regular laptop but also takes it to class, flips it into tablet mode and does all his class notes on it. And his homework, even if it’s hand written – he scans the original page and uses the pen to hand write the answers but that way it’s all organized in one place on one device (and backed up in the cloud). He’s also in various school bands and even puts his music on their and places it in tablet mode on his music stand instead of sheet music. He’s also found online versions of most of his textbooks so this laptop is really his one-stop-shop for all things.
My wife is now kind of jealous and thinking about switching when her next upgrade rolls around.
Here’s what he got: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/surface-laptop-studio/8srdf62swkpf?activetab=pivot%3Aoverviewtab
My H loves his surface too and we bought one for D, which she loves as well.
Good choice on the M1 MBA. Apple silicon will blow away Intel for years.
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