Hi I was just made aware that the third party applications made availabl when buying the commercial version of Media Composer (Specifically Sorenson Squeeze at least) are available with Academic Purchases.
I comfirmed this here: http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/faq/en347235?popup=true&NewLang=en&DocType=1079&q=third%20party%20academic&site=kbase&filter=0#a8
And was eventually led to this
http://apps.avid.com/ThirdPartyTool/
However the Third Party tool tells me "Warning Notification:The system is not eligible."
Acording to that sight i should be eligible as I have an academic copy, also I just used my free upgrade included for four years with an academic purchase to 6.5 (and have been using 6.5 succesfully) if that makes any difference
Thanks Jeff