how about elance for students only. Like facebook used to do requiring a .edu email address

Just as a reminder, universities outside the US don't get .edu addresses (for example, mine is just a .bc.ca adddress.) This may or may not be your intended effect.

well .edu is just a filter, we can chose to allow any domain/TLD

both the "locals" and "students" plan can easily be handled by a narrowed search in elance. Its simply a missing feature. If there are enough buyers that want this search aspect, it will appear very quickly.

Yeah, I like this a lot.

This is the best idea of the bunch. Instead of playing up the whole "American" angle it could be based on proximity (thereby working for the world). I'm sure the big boys have tools like this (zip code search), but as you suggested it would be a requirement and the whole push of the site would be to find someone local.

I like it.

http://www.redbeacon.com/ ?