When I was in College (just graduated a few months ago), GitHub applied a $7 coupon to my account, which covers a micro account. All I did was ask about student pricing. They should probably offer an educational discount with .edu email verification.
I am in a principles of programming languages class currently, and we are doing very similar work. We are writing interpreters, type checkers, and more for a new language our teacher has defined. We are doing all of this in Scala.
I have worked at an apple store, we only require proof that you are a student(student id, transcript, staff paycheck) and a drivers license #.
There is no check for the student pricing. You are however limited to buying one computer a year with the discount. So if you try to buy another computer within a year using an education discount with the same DL, you will be denied the discount.
US carriers do require this. After one year, AT&T usually lets you get the newest iPhone at the subsidized cost if you sign another contract. It still locks you in to two years from the date that you last bought a new phone.