Feature Request: Student School Affiliation Field & Role Tag on User Profiles

Summary

Add support for flagging users as students on their profiles, including a school affiliation field and a dedicated student role/metadata tag.

Motivation

As the WordPress contributor community grows to include more students, it would be valuable to surface this information in tooling like the WP Credits dashboard. Currently, there is no structured way to identify student contributors or associate them with their academic institution.

Proposed Changes

1. School Affiliation Field (Internal Profile Line)

   • Add an optional internal field on user profiles to record the name of a user's affiliated educational institution.
   • This field should be editable by the user or an admin, and visible internally (not necessarily public-facing).

2. Student Role or Metadata Tag

   • Introduce a student role or metadata flag that can be applied to user profiles.
   • This tag should be usable as a filter/query parameter to identify and group student contributors.

Acceptance Criteria

• A school affiliation field exists on the user profile (internal/admin-visible).
• A student role or metadata tag can be assigned to users.
• Both data points are queryable and accessible via the WP Credits dashboard.

Additional Context

This feature would improve visibility into student participation in the WordPress project and support programs that engage with academic communities.

Start by locating the user-profile storage and the WP Credits dashboard entry points that handle contributor data. Check how existing profile metadata, roles, and dashboard filters are represented before choosing between a student role and metadata flag. Done means both affiliation and student status can be assigned, queried, and consumed by the dashboard, with the internal visibility rules covered.