Hi everyone,

The new process for verifying an education account is horrible.

First, a disclaimer. I recognize forum moderators and support persons don't make platform decisions. I know the GitHub person(s) responding to this forum likely didn't decide to change how GitHub for Education works. I'm writing this in the hopes that even just a little feedback can be passed up to the ears of someone who makes said platform decisions. Because this is...bad.

So, to the decision-makers:

Unless I'm missing something, which is always possible, it's awful to use the new system. I dug around all over for different options to verify my education account, and I found no solutions to the awfulness. If there is a way to use the verification system better, please improve the site documentation. I don't have time to fight with GitHub for hours just to get my account to work, not when there are competing platforms that make it beyond-easy to get an education account.

Observations:

• The automated system only takes camera images (not file uploads?). Am I supposed to print my enrollment verification and shove it in front of my camera? Open it in a browser and photograph my screen with my phone? This is idiotic and inefficient, especially given this is a technology platform.
• You can't contact support for GitHub for Education - it tells you "we no longer use humans to verify accounts". Trying to go through standard GitHub support gets you a "closing ticket, please reach out to GitHub for Education". So if I have an issue verifying my account, there's no recourse. None.
• Having to post to a discussion platform to fix personal account issues is a weird, nonstandard, and privacy-ignorant mechanism.
• All over this discussion platform, I'm seeing issues about account verification. This is not just me. Seriously, guys, you need to either fix these issues or better-document the ways to use the verification system better.
• I keep seeing "issue was fixed when I used the site on my phone", which is at least something, except... this is GitHub. Many of us are programmers. We use computers - and phones, of course, but come on - fix your site in the browser.

I get it. Verifying accounts is hard. Putting in (paid) human effort for (unpaid) student accounts is also costly. But it's not a secret that students take familiar platforms with them into the professional world. If GitHub isn't convenient to use (for free) during their education, they'll just use another platform, and they'll take that with them into professional and personal projects. This isn't a trade secret or anything, it's well-known.

I'm just one person, and I know that - but I'm almost definitely not alone. So here's the loud opinion from this one person who is sad to see her GitHub days at a close: this system has decayed, and I won't use or recommend GitHub for Education anymore. I'm about to defend and am planning to go directly into research and professorship. I'm one person, but I do educate and used to push dozens to hundreds of students per year to use GitHub for Education (and beyond). I'm also going to write a simple PSA for others - labmates, other instructors, my advisors, other researchers, and anyone else relevant - and recommend that they go through this new process to see how bad it is, just so they can come to their own mind about if they should subject their students or labmates to this. Because I absolutely will not.

You guys need to fix this system. It's really, really bad, and people in tech do not have patience for a rotting platform when others readily exist.

And to anyone who does not make decisions about platform mechanisms, thanks for your time, and I hope you don't get as many headaches dealing with this system as I did trying to use it.