AVID sells price-reduced EDU Versions of their Pro Tools Software to students for quite some time now as most people already know.
In addition to this enormous discount, the biggest advantage of the EDU versions lies in the free upgrades that you get for 4 years after purchasing the software. If you have an EDU Version and are registered on the AVID page, you will receive an email right after the release of a new version with a free license for the upgrade.
That way I bought an EDU Version of Pro Tools 10 in 2011 and got Pro Tools 11 for free when it was released in June 2013. Now I have both versions installed on my mac, as it is finally possible to run both on one system.
There are various stores that sell those EDU versions, that need different verifications for being authorized to get an EDU license. As far as I experienced you need a student ID and your degree course should be something that deals with audio. I bought it at Digital AudionetworX and had no problems as a BA Sound student back in the days. Fellow students told me, it is also possible to buy it at Justmusic where no proof is needed, as AVID would check it when registering the software.
