GitHub Copilot for Students: A Comprehensive Guide

Most professional-grade software comes at a cost that almost all students in this world can't afford. This is where GitHub Education comes into the picture. GitHub Education is a program established by GitHub for students, teachers, and schools and a community dedicated to empowering the next generation of developers through the power of open-source education. It offers students real-world experience with free access to various developer tools. With just a few simple steps and student verification, you can unlock a complete developer toolkit to boost your skills, build projects, and prepare for your future-all at no cost. It's the smartest way to get hands-on experience and stand out in the tech industry.

What is GitHub Education?

GitHub Education is a program designed to provide students, educators, and schools with the tools and resources they need to succeed in the world of software development. The program offers a variety of benefits, including free access to developer tools, training materials, and a supportive community.

GitHub Student Developer Pack

The GitHub Student Developer Pack is a program that gives verified students free access to a wide range of premium developer tools and software. These are tools professionals use-offered at no cost to help students learn and build real-world projects. It’s like having a developer’s toolbox with everything from coding environments, cloud services, design tools, to learning platforms-all in one place, and all free. There are over 100 benefits from various companies that are packed together in the GitHub students developers pack. The GitHub student’s developer pack is strictly for students.

Included Benefits

The GitHub Student Developer Pack is a game-changer for students who want to learn, build, and grow in the tech world without the burden of high software costs. It offers free access to professional tools used in real-world development, from coding and cloud hosting to design and learning platforms. Some key benefits include:

Free GitHub Pro Account: Verified learners receive a free GitHub Pro account, which includes unlimited repositories and private repos with advanced collaboration tools to keep all your projects in one place.
Build Anywhere: Includes 3,000 Actions minutes and 180 Codespaces hours per month, along with 2 GB Packages storage and 20 GB Codespaces storage, providing more room for ideas.

Software and Tools

The pack includes access to a variety of software and tools:

JetBrains IDEs: Get full access to JetBrains IDEs to write clean, efficient code for web, mobile, or data projects.
Visual Studio Code: Use Visual Studio Code to write clean, efficient code for web, mobile, or data projects.
Heroku, DigitalOcean, Render: Launch your apps for the world to see using Heroku, DigitalOcean, or Render-all included in the pack.
Educative: Access premium courses on Educative.
Bootstrap Studio: Access design tools like Bootstrap Studio.

Learning Platforms and Resources

The pack also offers access to various learning platforms and resources:

GitHub Skills: Learn how to use GitHub with interactive courses designed for beginners and experts.
Community Exchange: Find and collaborate on projects that take your skills further. Community Exchange brings together students and educators to share valuable learning resources, from code samples and tutorials to full projects.
Experiences: Discover the best ways to use pack offers with Experiences.

GitHub Copilot

What is GitHub Copilot?

GitHub Copilot provides autocomplete-style suggestions from an AI pair programmer as you code. GitHub Copilot Pro is your AI-powered coding companion. Available for free to verified students, teachers, and open-source maintainers, Copilot offers real-time, context-aware code suggestions right in your editor-whether you're learning the ropes or an experienced developer.

How to Get Started with Copilot

To set up Copilot as an authenticated Github Student Developer, you need to follow these steps:

Create a GitHub account: If you don't already have one, create a GitHub account.
Enable Copilot Pro: To enable Copilot Pro, go to your account settings and under Code, planning, and automation, select Copilot to sign up for free.
Connect your Github account: If you already have a Copilot account, you can simply connect your Github account and activate your Github Student Developer Pack from your Copilot account settings.

You should now be able to use Copilot with your Github Student Developer Pack benefits.

GitHub Codespaces

GitHub Codespaces provides a powerful, cloud-based development environment accessible from any device with internet access. Codespaces offers a consistent, customizable platform that scales with your development needs, supporting your journey from beginner to advanced projects, wherever you are.

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GitHub Classroom

Teachers and school administrators can use GitHub Classroom to create virtual classrooms, make and edit assignments, automatically grade assignment submissions, and more.

GitHub Campus Experts

As a GitHub Campus Expert, you’ll receive training and support to enhance your skills in public speaking, technical writing, community management, and more. Start making a significant impact at your campus and build your future in technology today.

Additional Tools and Services

GitHub Education also provides access to a variety of other tools and services, including:

Notion: A single space where you can think, write, and plan. The Notion Education plan offers everything in the Plus plan + increased sharing & collaboration capabilities and longer page history.
Microsoft Azure: Free access to 25+ Microsoft Azure cloud services plus $100 in Azure credit.
Codédex: A brand new learn-to-code platform for Gen Z with courses in Python, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Git & GitHub, Command Line, and more.
.TECH Domain: One standard .TECH domain free for 1 year.
DataCamp: Discover the best learning environment to learn and retain concepts effortlessly. Dive into 6 months of free access to over 70 practical courses, covering hot topics like Web Development, Python, Java, and Machine Learning.
GitLens: The #1 Git extension for VS Code; enriching your IDE with Git visualizations such as inline blame annotations, the Commit Graph, and the innovative Launchpad.
1Password: Whether you’re coding, cramming for an exam, or collaborating with classmates, 1Password keeps all of your important information safe and at your fingertips.
GitKraken Desktop: The most popular Git client for Windows, Mac & Linux, offering both a GUI and terminal interface.
New Relic: Free New Relic while you are a student. It is a code performance measurement tool.
Deepnote: Offers free use of the Deepnote Team plan while you are a student.
Zyte's Scrapy Cloud: A battle-tested cloud platform for running web crawlers. Offers 1 Free Forever Scrapy Cloud Unit - unlimited team members, projects or requests.
CodeScene: Helps you learn how to write healthier code, pinpoint and manage tech debt and other code quality issues. It gives you instant feedback on your code and recommendations based on the best coding practices and latest standards.
Slide Coach: An AI presentation coach to practice your presentations in private with your personal AI coach.

Community and Support

GitHub Education is a fantastic opportunity for students to build solid communities. The program offers awesome tools like the GitHub Student Developer Pack and helps shape great leaders with the Campus Experts Program.

Community Discussions: Have questions or need help? Join in on the conversation and meet fellow students and teachers all learning together with GitHub.
A student community within the GitHub Global Campus portal.

Open Source and Collaboration

Everything you need to know to understand the origins of open source work, how to become a contributor, a maintainer or a sponsor of an open source project and how to propel open source work into a career. Start with the basics including intro guides, how to find good first issues and basic open source vocabulary.

Read also: Enhance Skills with GitHub Lab

GitHub Flow

GitHub flow is a lightweight, branch-based workflow. In this Experience you'll learn the basics of the GitHub Flow including creating and making changes to branches within a repository, as well as creating and merging pull requests.

Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. More simply put, Markdown is a way to write content for the web and one of the most important ways developers can make their communication clear and organized in issues and pull requests.

Real-World Projects and Skills

Work on real-world projects with Community Exchange. Find and collaborate on projects that take your skills further.

Project Ideas

Creative Projects: Develop your design and collaboration skills to get your clever intentions off the ground.
Data Science: Flex your skills in data collection, cleaning, analysis, visualization, programming, and machine learning.
Mobile App Development: Have an idea for a mobile app you'd like to bring to life?
Virtual Events: Everything you need for your virtual event. Design for engagement and we'll take care of the tools.

Profile README

Say ‘Hello world’ with a profile README that lets you introduce yourself to the GitHub community. You decide what information to include in your profile README, so you have full control over how you present yourself on GitHub.

DevOps

Developer Operations (DevOps) is the symbiotic relationship between teams, culture and development that allows for collaboration, growth and continuous improvement.

Getting Started with Codespaces

Wondering how to get started with Codespaces? This launchpad uses Scrimba’s uniquely interactive approach to let you simultaneously watch a simple javascript tutorial and edit code in real time.

Becoming GitHub Certified

Becoming GitHub certified-paired with hands-on experience-demonstrates to potential employers, collaborators, and clients that you possess a verified level of expertise in utilizing GitHub effectively. Note that the voucher system is migrating on June 30, 2025. During the migration, voucher distribution will pause.

Application Process

Submitted applications are sometimes reviewed within the hour or at most within a day. On some occasions, more proof might be required.

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