In an official press release, Microsoft has unveiled “Student Advantage,” a new program that brings Microsoft Office 365 Education to more students worldwide. Office 365 Education, tailored for schools, provides the same cloud-powered Office applications such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel anywhere, across any device.
“Beginning Dec. 1, 2013, any institution worldwide that licenses Office 365 ProPlus or Office Professional Plus for staff and faculty can provide access to Office 365 ProPlus for students at no additional cost. Today, more than 35,000 institutions are automatically eligible to deliver the Student Advantage benefit to their students,” Microsoft stated in an official press release.
Microsoft wants to help prepare students for the technology skills required in the workforce by offering these tools to students for free. According to Microsoft, nearly 98% of students are already using the Office productivity suite. However, with this Student Advantage program, students can get their hands on the latest Office 365 suite, powered by the cloud, across all their devices.
“Students use Office every day for school work and activities that are most important to them. Office not only helps students stay organized and get their work done today but at the same time develops skills that will be required when they enter the work force. In fact, no other software or services show up in the top 20 most important skills identified in the research report,” Anthony Salcito stated. He is the VP of Worldwide Public Sector Education at Microsoft.
“We are thrilled to offer Student Advantage to schools across the globe so students have access to the latest, most up-to-date version of the world’s leading set of productivity tools in order to give them a competitive advantage when entering the workforce,” he adds.
Microsoft plans to offer more details on this program in the near future.
Further reading: Microsoft, Office 365
