Repeatedly rejected by GitHub Education because I’m temporarily abroad – this system is broken - AI is not the solution.

[Horsti95]

Hi everyone,

Hi GitHub Education Team & community,

I honestly don’t know what else I’m supposed to do anymore.

I’m a fully enrolled on-campus full-time student at IMC Krems (University of Applied Sciences).
I have submitted:

• official Confirmation of Enrolment (full legal name, university name, date, program)
• Study Sheet clearly showing active student + current semester
• my official student ID card
• documents in English and completely legible
• my GitHub profile name exactly matching my legal student identity
• with location services enabled and absolutely no VPN

Yet my application keeps being rejected again and again, because the automated system flags me for not currently being in my campus country.

The reality is simple:
I’m temporarily abroad during university break while working on a remote internship. I am not trying to cheat anything. I am a legitimate student who simply isn’t physically near campus for a short, totally normal situation.

But the current system seems to assume only two rigid cases:

• either you must be physically near campus, or
• you must be officially distance learning

If you are a normal on-campus student who is temporarily abroad… you get blocked. Period.

This feels extremely unfair and honestly broken. Students travel. Students visit family. Students do internships. Students go abroad. Real life exists — the system simply doesn’t handle that reality.

And honestly…

The forced live camera step with the 3-2-1 countdown that almost always results in blurry images is incredibly frustrating, especially on a platform meant for developers building sophisticated technology. A company like GitHub should be able to provide a more reliable and humane verification experience.

What makes this even worse:

There is no individual human review anymore for Education applications. Support literally redirects you here and explicitly states that no manual verification will be provided. So we’re stuck in a loop where an AI keeps rejecting legitimate students… and there is no human safety net.

That’s incredibly discouraging.

I really hope someone from GitHub Education can acknowledge this problem and provide a fair, realistic path for students who are fully enrolled but temporarily outside their campus country.

Right now it honestly feels like honest students are being punished for not fitting into the AI’s very narrow assumptions.

Thank you 🙏