There's nothing to stop you claiming a student discount and getting finance for it, no. But the finance will be subject to the usual credit checking and scoring, and part of the eligibility for the credit is being in paid employment for 16+ hours. If you put 'unemployed/student' on the credit application, it's going to be rejected. And if you lie about it (which presumably your uni friend did), and they contact your 'employer' to verify the application and find you've lied about it, any credit agreement already approved would be cancelled and the monies due immediately - you could also end up with a fraud warning.
Your choice as to whether or not you want to take the risk of submitting a fraudulent credit application. From a financial point of view, it would make more sense to use your savings rather than taking out credit because the interest rate you get from your savings will be dwarfed by the interest you're charged on any credit agreement.