It will not bring a spike on price... rather it will further push down the exchange rate. 90% of the students will immediately convert the coins to fiat, using either localbitcoins.com or some other exchange.
even if all the students cashed out in 1 day on the major exchanges that people use for pricing bitcoin, 1000 coins wont make a dent.. if they cashed out through local bitcoins it definetly wont make a dent. and if they cashed out at different times using localbitcoins, foodler, overstock.com, and many other vendors. it will most definetly not even leave a scratch.
1000 bitcoins is nothing, when you look at the big picture of exchange volume each day. but the potential those 1000 coins can bring to students as part of MIT projects and USING bitcoin. can be astronomical.
you just need to realise that if atleast 20,000 businesses have entered the bitcoin ecosystem before even receiving a bitcoin. then imagine the tools, programs, mobile apps and other usful stuff smart people can come up with while using it.
now with all that said MIT could have saved alot of money by just offering the students coins from the testnet.
