Agree with the article, it is annoying that some student discount only applies with .edu email address which means US-only accredited school. But a lot of .edu email address owner is actually wealthy so...
For example, here's the JetBrains repository - https://github.com/JetBrains/swot - of worldwide educational institution domains that they are using for validation of their educational licenses; a smaller organization can probably piggyback off of it or a similar list instead of maintaining their own.
I wonder if .edu is more strictly controlled in America though, because I still have an alumni.*.ac.uk address, which presumably anyone with automated handling of it would still accept. (Unless I suppose that's also common over there and they filter it out, and hope for no Mr Al Umnus from Scunthorpe.)