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?