Apple has allowed students in an iPad-centric digital marketing class to exchange their original iPads for iPad 2s, according to a report from Forbes. The university had originally purchased first generation iPads for the class, which began this week, just a few days before iPad 2 is officially launched on March 11th, but the company took the devices back and will instead supply iPad 2s on the 11th.
The class is aimed primarily aimed at young professionals who pay for their iPads as part of the course fees — the device is theirs to keep after the course is complete. Scheduled and signed up for long before the iPad 2 was announced, the school was afraid that there would be a perception issue with some students on working on newly-made obsolete technology, but the local Apple Store that had managed the deal from the get-go took case of the school.
“We expected to have to tell the students that it was just unfortunate timing,” Eric Greenberg, the Faculty Chair for Rutgers’ Center for Management Development, told Forbes. “But Apple really surprised me by being so flexible.”
The course is part of a series of business classes Rutgers is offering that use the iPad, and the “flexibility” that so surprised Professor Greenburg suggests that Apple sees such courses as further opportunity move iPad into the enterprise and other business markets.