Back when I (briefly) worked at a local community college, I was introduced to Microsoft's "charitable education" stuff at work.

Basically it goes like this:

Microsoft releases a list of software, with full retail prices listed. They also tell the institution "you have this much $$$ to purchase stuff with."

The institutions "purchase" the software, recieve the licenses, and Microsoft gets a tax writeoff for the full value of the software.

Nice scam, eh?