The Microsoft Live@edu upgrade team has been working very hard to make sure the transition from Live@edu to Office 365 will be as smooth as possible. Two new features have recently been announced:

No downtime throughout the upgrade

Earlier the upgrade required a few hours downtime, but this has been altered by the service team.

The duration of the upgrade is dependent on the size of your institution, and can take days to complete, but users won’t experience any downtime throughout the upgrade.

http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/upgrade/overview.aspx

Password copy

The password is now copied from Live@edu to the new Office 365 account, which reduces complexity when informing the users about the service changes.

The first scheduled batches of upgrades have just started and will continue the next couple of months. The customers will receive their first email approximately 30 days
before their scheduled date.