Toon Boom offering $1000 discounted cross-grade to Solo

As a registered user of Toon Boom Studio, I just received an offer in my inbox to upgrade to Toon Boom Solo for *only* $1999, which sounds outrageous, but is actually a $1000 savings off the retail price. However, on the main page for Solo, they're offering a $500 discount to anyone and everyone purchasing with promotional code SOLSOVC511, so it's really only a $500 cross-grade savings.

In any case, it's still too expensive for my budget. Perhaps there's an educational discount price for it. Last time I tried to get the educational discount from Toon Boom, however, they charged me the full-price of Toon Boom Studio, claiming that I needed to actually be in an animation class to qualify for the discount, not just affiliated with an institution of higher education. Not very cool on their part, if you ask me.