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If you’ve lived on a college campus recently, you know the dominance of the Apple brand. Macs are a leader in notebooks for college students and some academic majors even require them. There have not been nearly as many iPhones on college campuses, though, because Apple has not offered any serious iPhone discounts for students. Now, AppleInsider is reporting that Apple is considering a dedicated program for iPhone distribution on college campuses in their large network of Apple certified retailers.

It appears that the plan is to observe the initial launch of the 3G iPhone in Apple and AT&T retail locations and see whether the in-store activation method is an effective way of controlling the flow. They have already tested iPhone distribution in a few upper-crust schools, integrating it with iTunes University, but this new strategy would be a big move for the iPhone. If the iPhone could be made affordable to college students by bundling or discounting the device, campus sales be a major growth area.

This comes on the heels of AppleInsider’s report that Apple might give new iMac or MacBook users a free iPhone. Apple has already done a similar promotion where students buying a Mac get a free iPod. The “back to school” season will be in just enough for Apple to decide how well the new launch methods worked and announce an awesome deal for college students.

[Via AppleInsider] [Image from Apple]