Minecraft bears absolutely no interface similarity to any other Microsoft product. What you're saying happens and is already happening with the educational discounts on MS Office, but Minecraft doesn't contribute to that at all.

I can see that it might be creating familiarity with the company name (or is it? what fraction of people distinguish between OEM, OS and software vendor?), but unlike gas stations and hotels I don't see software as a place where that matters a lot.

Really? Minecraft existed long before Microsoft bought it.

Quite a few people learned programming in Visual Basic and went on to have rich, diverse careers.