Short answer: It depends on the types of apps they'll need to use
If your child is going to mainly take notes, use web apps, write essays and prepare presentations, I reckon that an iPad could be more than enough.
Combined with an Apple Pencil and a Logitech Combo Touch keyboard with a trackpad, an iPad Air 5th Gen with 256GB of storage is for me the sweet spot in terms of capabilities and price.
All that is for about €1,150 in Luxembourg or about $1,070 (plus tax) in the US.
Now, if your child will need to use specialised and/or desktop-only applications, then it depends on how much disk space and memory those apps require.
For light tasks (email, web apps, basic photo and video editing), the 2020 M1 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD is a great option for about €1,400 in Luxembourg or about $1,200 (plus tax) in the US.
Bumping the RAM to 16GB (the maximum it can have) increases the price by about €220 in Luxembourg and $200 (+ tax) in the US, and the same goes to add 512GB of storage.
When those two are combined (16GB RAM and 1TB SSD) the price is still below the €2,000/$2,000 mark.
For more demanding tasks (Xcode development, 4K/8K footage editing, 3D modelling), the more RAM and SSD you have the better.
Only the latest 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros can fit up to 64GB of RAM and 8 TB of SSD.
The base model 14-inch MacBook (M1 Pro with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD) starts at about €2,180 in Luxembourg and $2,000 (+tax) in the US, to which you need to add about €500/$500 for the 16-inch model.
Bumping the RAM to 32GB increases the price by about €450 in Luxembourg and $400 (+ tax) in the US while going to a 1TB SSD increases the price by about €220 in Luxembourg and $200 (+ tax).
When those two are combined (32GB RAM and 1TB SSD) the price is still below the €3,000/$3,000 mark.
To be able to order a MacBook Pro with 64GB RAM, the chip needs to be upgraded at least to the 24-core GPU M1 Max and such model with 1TB of SSD costs about €3,780 in Luxembourg and about $3,500 (+ tax) in the US
Regardless of the type of device that you'll buy, Apple is offering discounts to college students and their parents in several ways:
either directly, or through their education stores:
Australia: https://www.apple.com/au-hed/store
Germany: https://www.apple.com/de-edu/shop/education-pricing
Switzerland (FR): https://www.apple.com/ch-fr-edu/store
Switzerland (DE): https://www.apple.com/ch-de-edu/store
or via Premium Reseller "Back to school" promotion like the one offered by LineHeart in Luxembourg (https://www.lineheart.lu/fr/back-to-school-2022/
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