Eben Upton regularly mentions that machines like the BBC Micro gave the country a generation of youngsters with the technical spark that in time led to PhDs and business entrepreneurs, and it's very true. But the ground was more fertile for engineers in other respects as well, because "back in our day", the UK government used to invest in future experts by paying for their university tuition through grants. (Student loans were considered "that anti-educational American idea", and ridiculed.) The investment in people made at that time was well rewarded, as our tuition fees were paid back to government hundreds of times over by successful engineers through taxes.
Then Maggie came along and made the greed motive fashionable, and everything started going downhill. "That American idea" became the norm, and inevitably added a disincentive against pursuing a university degree. The dearth of engineers today doesn't have only Eben's single cause, it has multiple. Every hurdle you add reduces the number of future engineers, and money is a very big hurdle for most young people.
The Foundation is already a non-profit of course, so that's already going in the right direction. The two distributors are probably making so little profit on Rpi currently that it's only barely "business" I expect, mostly just good PR for them, not much profit. That could change if high volume brings their BOM and manufacturing costs down, but for now they may have no headroom for educational discounts on Rpi at all.
We'll have to see whether government still has the foresight to invest in future engineers once the Rpi is available in an educational package, time will tell. Perhaps this is where other pillars of UK industry could step in and offer Rpi for education for free, or at least heavily discounted. Every little bit helps secure the country's technical future.
This is a tough question to answer. I agree with Morgaine that the more hurdles you put in front of feature engineers the less likely we are to have them. On the other hand if I owned the company producing the material I couldn't just keep giving away my devices. I have to make money too. Also look at apple that has the student discount, how many people you think abuse this since they don't check it if you order online. I think we need to do something for our young inventors but what is a fair solution for all parties.
I agree with Brian, that at $25 or $35 this is a significantly affordable price for schools. I spent a few years working in the US and schools struggle to keep their student use IT up to date. Lots of schools have second- or third-hand PCs that would struggle to keep up with an RPi. Companies like HP and Dell give paltry 5-15% discounts for new systems to schools where they still need to add software and accessories. A cheap PC will still cost a school close to $500-$1000. The RPi will give schools the ability to provide computing capabilities for students for around $100 if you add in the power supply, SD card and keyboard/mouse.
I consider myself lucky to eventually receive one at this price.
Sure, $25-$35 is definitely "cheap" for most people in the developed world, and it's that very low price which has made demand for the Pi skyrocket. But "cheap" isn't "discounted". Those are two different things entirely.
No, your right, cheap isn't discounted. Perhaps the PI people would have been better suggesting a £39.95 price for us who want to play with it outside of education and 'discout' it to £25.00 for schools etc. We would still be clammering for it.
My feeling that they are doing a great job at providing it at such a good price and a lot of 'us' are just creating a lot of unncessary noise about price, configuration, delivery schedules, moaning about when we will get it, why doesn't it do this - that- and the outher, just let them get it finished and manufactured. I can wait until August if required, had it not been for the PI people I would not get one ever!
You're missing the point by a mile. $25 is still $25, even if arrived at using your alternative suggestion. It's not less than $25, which is what discounting would achieve (for Edu only).
That $25 was viable pricing for the Foundation despite the batch size being a mere 10,000. The $25 was not loss-maker pricing. Therefore when Farnell + RS commission mass volume production and hence their BOM cost drops markedly, there will be extra room for dropping the price through discounts, for Edu only.
That was the point. The fact that the current price is a good one for us is completely immaterial, and the fact that you and I are happy with the current price is also totally immaterial when the subject is education. Of course it's a good price, it's a great one, for us! But education needs all the help it can get. We don't.
No I'm not, wasn't it developed as a tool to get students more interested in programming and messing about with computers in the raw? If so the the £25 price is an educational price, and a good one. We are the ones benefiting from the educational price, so if it would help the cause perhaps non-educational buyers should pay a small mark-up of say £5.00 to go directly to the pi people to help with the on-going develpment of the Raspi.
