Sony is always on the prowl for engineers and programmers with a familiarity with their hardware, but they haven't exactly made it easy to get your hands on a development kit in the past. That all changes now as SCEA introduces the PlayStation-edu program, which focuses on familiarizing you engineers and programmers with the PlayStation hardware.
Qualifying institutions (college level and above) will be given a chance to purchase PSP and PlayStation 2 development kits complete with the hardware, dev software, and SDK, along with demo codes and samples so teachers can illustrate how the hardware works to students. The goal here is to generate a fresh crop of college graduates armed with the knowledge they need to create on SCEA hardware.
Interested parties can hit the link below for contact information, and if you are currently in a game programming or computer architecture class, start bugging the hell out of your professor so you too can get your hands on a PlayStation 2 with the word TOOL on the side in big letters.
PlayStation-edu [The Official PlayStation Blog]