I don't know about Cakewalk specifically but most Academic buyers need an school email address or some other method to "prove" you are in school. I suppose you are talking about a non-cakewalk seller, so that will depend upon the store. You might want to include that info in a post so others can look.
I (or rather my wife) has gotten academic deals for software and we saved a few dollars. She simply used her school account - .edu to get the discount. It is the same program, of course. I can't see any company giving a crippled program to educators, since the whole point of academic discounts is to get kids using your software early so they'll buy it later. If you can't use it fully, not much incentive. But again, all this depends upon the seller. They are the ones you need to query.