Having teachers provide their own Office 365 license

[jamfthrowaway]

So I'm so uncertain in regards to what I'm doing, I went through the trouble of creating a throw-away account so I won't get in trouble!

I'm doing the IT stuff for a very small private K-12 school. To say that every penny counts is an understatement. After using some very old licenses with somewhat murky purchase histories (the documented purchases I've been able to dig up is far less than actual installation counts) I came across Microsoft's offer for a free copy of Office 365 for teachers ( https://products.office.com/en-US/student/office-in-education ).

My question is simply this - am I standing on thin ice by asking teachers to head over to that site, sign up, and then activate Office 365 on their work computers using that license to avoid having to use the school's money to purchase licenses? Nearly all of the administration staff also teaches a few courses on the side so I can cover pretty much everyone this way (no need for any student licenses) but I could be convinced to look into licenses for those couple of people who can't really be called teachers by any stretch of the imagination.

Thoughts? (Obligatory Jamf reference--all the Macs are managed by Jamf. Not really related in any other way other than it being their own fault for building up such a great community of IT folks, many in education, to share their wisdom with the masses!)

[larry_barrett]

Good luck getting a group of non tech users to follow more than 3 steps (for anything).

There is a free, school-wide version you should check out https://products.office.com/en-us/academic/compare-office-365-education-plans

We just make it available in self service and the end user runs a serializer package.

[adamcodega]

You should definitely be looking at anything you can get for free and educational pricing. Microsoft has an Office 365 for Education technical FAQ you can review.

It's virtually the same whether you sign up the organization for Office 365, or the faculty/students sign themselves up. The self sign up benefit lets Microsoft directly encourage and get faculty and students to sign up whether or not the school has yet or cares to.

Some schools are eligible for Office 365 A1 Plus, which includes Office 365 ProPlus and would be equivalent to a free license which includes the desktop apps.