Alright while this may look like its generous look at the dirty side of it. While this is just a ploy to have MS increase its revenues down the road. Once these individuals are locked into a MS scheme and they are no longer students who will have more money to spend MS will charge them the higher rates and thus increasing their revenues.
Now Apple won't sell their OS for 3 dollars a pop mostly because its tied to their hardware. Can you see any company giving away a $3 computer? Not to mention this is in 3rd world countries where the standard of living is poor and the need for apple based products such as final cut pro, Aperture, logic, shake, etc. So the justification that apple is bad just because they don't provide students in 3rd world countries with cheap software is a poor example. And don't forget to mention that Steve Jobs did offer to have OS X placed on all the $150 laptops for developing nations that the UN and MIT are sponsoring for free.
In the long run this is a ploy by MS to increase their marketshare while trying to lock in consumers to their dying formats. MS has tried to control formats just so they can lock users in examples are Windows Media, Office, Silverlight (a new competitor to flash) they are trying to lock people into their version of a PDF and a new "higher res" image format. And while competition is good, don't mistake short generosity with a long term development for a new revenue stream.
