Sprint employee/university discount

I've been with Sprint a looooong time. Only reason I've put up with their crappy service is because of the employee discount I had. I left the qualifying company long ago but the discount stuck for many years. Now that I renewed my contract Sprint wants me to verify my discount, and I can't.

Any way to get around this? If I know someone who works at a company that qualifies, can I use their email address to verify?

What about education discounts? If I know a student at a qualifying university can I use their email address?

Assuming of course that in either case the person doesn't already get a Sprint discount so their email address is "clean." What if I just have .edu email address? Is that alone enough to qualify? I think I have an @alumni.edu email address, can I use that?

If I can't lower my bill I'm leaving Sprint. No reason to deal with all of Sprint's issues unless I'm getting a discount. Every time I talk to them they say "but it's unlimited data" and I tell them that unlimited data is worthless if the coverage is crap. Their data is limited by their coverage.