Students and teachers in many countries outside the US can now use Microsoft Office 365, an updated version of Microsoft Office 2013, with their institutional login for free. Previously, it was only accessible for free to eligible students and teachers in the US. However, Microsoft has extended the plan and now, the offer is available to other countries as well. Schools which are interested in the offer need to buy the Microsoft Office 365 license in order for their students and teachers to be eligible for free access.
Many schools outside the US are interested in this relatively new Microsoft program and have bought the license for their students, staffs and teachers to use. According to an official blog post by Microsoft, there are now 5.5 million eligible students in Australia, nearly 5 million in Germany, 7 million or more in Brazil, 1.3 million at Anadolu University in Turkey and millions more in Hong Kong and elsewhere, which will increase in the coming years.
We might be wondering why Microsoft is doing this. Microsoft isn't alone in the business, it sees this as a strategy to eliminate its competitors. The company realizes the potentials of the future workforce that it is willing to develop a habit of using Microsoft products among the students from the beginning and hopes to retain this habit when they start working.
Eligible students can go to www.office.com/getoffice365 and teachers can visit www.office.com/teachers and sign up with their institutional email address if they are interested to get free access.They can then download the latest versions of MSWord, MSExcel, MSPowerPoint, MSOneNote, MSAccess and MSPublisher that can be installed for free on up to 5 mobile devices and 5 PCs or Macs. On OneDrive they will also get 1TB of free storage and Office Online will also be accessible for in-browser editing.
