College Student Discount - is this right??

My daughter ordered a new computer for school. It says at the top of the apple education store "get $150 gift card". She ordered the computer, but when the charges came through there was a $150 charge for the gift card. I went to the cart and it shows -$150 which is your "savings" but then there is a second charge for $150 for the gift card.

Is this really what Apple is doing?? Basically baiting college kids to buy through their store for a gift card that you have to pay for? That is not a discount. These kids need money to pay for college, books, and food. What Apple has done (which I will argue is misleading, call it marketing semantics at best) is terrible, essentially forcing them to buy a gift card, which requires them to buy more stuff, rather than helping them with the actual cost of product as students. She could have bought the same computer from Best Buy and saved money in her overall budget for what she actually needs.

Can someone confirm this is actually what is happening?