GitHub Classroom: "Repository Access Issue" #72283

gchallen · 2023-10-25T16:52:16Z

gchallen
Oct 25, 2023

Hi everyone,

We're using GitHub Classroom to help students set up repositories in my ~1000 student CS1 course at Illinois. Overall it works great! However, it seems like every semester we run into some strange issue.

This term one student arrives at the following screen when trying to accept the Classroom invitation:

I've checked both through Classroom and in our organization where the repositories are created, and can verify that there are no repositories created for this student. In the past when we've had repository creation issues I've been able to delete the semi-created repository and start over. But in this case I'm at a loss for what to do. I'm suggesting that the student try creating a new GitHub account and see if that helps, but that's not a great workaround.

I'm happy to provide more details if someone from GitHub can look into this more closely. Thanks in advance!

A suggestion...(optional)

No response

girodg · 2024-01-08T16:33:22Z

girodg
Jan 8, 2024

any updates on this? I have a student encountering the same problem.

1 reply

kaliprogramer Mar 5, 2026

@girodg go to the student repo through the assignment list, click settings > collaborators and teams. under manage access you'll see a pending invite. for whatever reason, that invite is invalid, so delete it and re-invite (Add people). use their github username and grant write access.

when the student goes back to github the new invite will either automatically pop up for them, or they can click on the inbox icon in the upper-right with the blue dot and accept.

about half my students are getting hit with this this semester.

chrissexton · 2024-01-11T00:05:53Z

chrissexton
Jan 11, 2024

If your organization has 2FA requirement turned on, be sure the student actually has their account set up for it.

0 replies

gchallen · 2024-01-14T16:29:09Z

gchallen
Jan 14, 2024
Author

FYI, at least in the case posted above the student's GitHub account had actually been disabled. So that's something else to check.

1 reply

LiliWeiSE Feb 6, 2024

Hi,
May I know how we can check whether a student's GitHub account was actually disabled?

Mayank447 · 2024-01-19T13:53:26Z

Mayank447
Jan 19, 2024

I had the same issue. Go the student's repository, in my case it was created but when the student tried accessing it, it showed the same error. Manually invite him and the error should get fixed.

7 replies

emmett-tomai Sep 6, 2025

@StefanidisK go to the student repo through the assignment list, click settings > collaborators and teams. under manage access you'll see a pending invite. for whatever reason, that invite is invalid, so delete it and re-invite (Add people). use their github username and grant write access.

when the student goes back to github the new invite will either automatically pop up for them, or they can click on the inbox icon in the upper-right with the blue dot and accept.

about half my students are getting hit with this this semester.

StefanidisK Sep 7, 2025

@StefanidisK go to the student repo through the assignment list, click settings > collaborators and teams. under manage access you'll see a pending invite. for whatever reason, that invite is invalid, so delete it and re-invite (Add people). use their github username and grant write access.

when the student goes back to github the new invite will either automatically pop up for them, or they can click on the inbox icon in the upper-right with the blue dot and accept.

about half my students are getting hit with this this semester.

Thank you. Someone else sent me these instructions too and I got it working. Thanks!

AndrewVenegas Sep 7, 2025

Hi guys, does anyone know how to solve this efficiently?

I have 100 students and I’m currently sending each of them a new invitation manually.

Thank u!

nikmomo Sep 7, 2025

Hi guys, does anyone know how to solve this efficiently?

I have 100 students and I’m currently sending each of them a new invitation manually.

Thank u!

https://github.com/nikmomo/GHClassroom.AccessFix This would help. I am running it on 2 courses with 5 sections

bogdanned Sep 8, 2025

Hey there, same here, we have 100s of student and a dozen repositories...

norandomtechie · 2024-03-06T14:35:45Z

norandomtechie
Mar 6, 2024

Just wanted to drop my two cents on this:

This appears to be happening for every student in our course as of February (about 200 this semester), not just the one. Thankfully it does seem like the repositories are getting created, but the issue has still not been fixed - if anything, it's worse.

0 replies

CodyHenrichsen-CTEC · 2024-09-17T19:25:33Z

CodyHenrichsen-CTEC
Sep 17, 2024

I just had three students with the same error. I am going to try resetting the repo.

0 replies

CodyHenrichsen-CTEC · 2024-09-17T19:28:52Z

CodyHenrichsen-CTEC
Sep 17, 2024

Deleted repo and recreate is the same error for students. up to 5 now

0 replies

Parsa-Rajabi · 2024-09-17T20:34:30Z

Parsa-Rajabi
Sep 17, 2024

Following this post for updates. The issue has bubbled up again -- can anyone from @github-staff comment?

0 replies

vincentsijben · 2024-09-17T20:39:17Z

vincentsijben
Sep 17, 2024

Just happened to 2 of my students as well. Different organisations... Hope its a bug and its fixed soon 😉

3 replies

Parsa-Rajabi Sep 17, 2024

Hey Vincent, have you thought about any work arounds for the current issue? (e.g. using a different platform?) These issues are making me re-think using GH Classroom moving forward...

vincentsijben Sep 17, 2024

nah, just wait until its fixed 😉 hopefully within 24 hours 😆

gbacon Sep 19, 2024

I was able to work around the problem by deleting the assignment repos created for the students who got the error and having them reaccept the assignment.

nelsonlim · 2024-09-17T20:42:34Z

nelsonlim
Sep 17, 2024

Just happened to my students as well. While we can manually add students. It does become a pain on scale.

0 replies

Mitchman215 · 2024-09-17T20:55:04Z

Mitchman215
Sep 17, 2024

Also is happening in our course for a lot of students, have to manually add

0 replies

Ujoa · 2024-09-17T21:06:11Z

Ujoa
Sep 17, 2024

@github-staff

0 replies

lisamru · 2024-09-17T21:12:10Z

lisamru
Sep 17, 2024

Ran into this issue as well today for 2 students. They were able to access their first two assignments with no issues and could not access the third.

1 reply

lisamru Sep 17, 2024

Just had another section and another student is unable to access. Hopefully this is resolved by the time we have our official lab on Thursday!

ekgibbons · 2024-09-17T21:29:18Z

ekgibbons
Sep 17, 2024

Same issue with my courses. It seems like any assignments that were accepted yesterday were okay. Anything that was accepted today ran into this issue.

0 replies

JoshIsomLehigh · 2024-09-17T21:32:47Z

JoshIsomLehigh
Sep 17, 2024

Several students successfully accepted assignments this morning, but as of several hours ago students report "when I try to accept the assignment on github it says that I no longer have access" I submitted a ticket at https://support.github.com/

0 replies

mikesmithlab · 2025-09-24T15:51:31Z

mikesmithlab
Sep 24, 2025

I wanted to share a solution that I will be using for my course. Many of the fixes I've seen involve scripts trying to fix permissions after the student has tried clicking on the github classroom link. The drawback with that is that the students get refused entry to repo, you then have to keep running a script to change permissions and allow them access.

This approach creates their repo and modifies the permissions before I then send them the usual github classroom link. Now when they click on it they should have no issues because repo and permissions are already setup correctly. I can run this for all the assignments in my course at the beginning of term and forget about everything. This approach needs you to know the students github id. I plan to send out a welcome email asking them to register for a github account and then fill in a microsoft form with name, email and github id.

I have an excel file with names, github id and emails from the form. I also had to set up a personal access token (its in Github Settings > Developer Settings > Personal Access Tokens. Choose Tokens (classic ). Select the repo checkbox and generate the PAT. I then have that in a .json file containing {'API_KEY': pat code}

Once I've collected github ids I then run a python script which interacts with github api. It can be rerun as it won't overwrite student repos that have been created previously or change permissions for students that have already been modified.

You need to set:
a) your ORGNAME,
b) path to the file with PAT,
c) path to student excel file,
d) the assignment name (This is what you called it in github classroom),
e) assignment_template (This is the name of the template repo used to create the assignment)

Then you should be able to run this python script.

Finally, send out the links for github classroom assignments as usual.

import requests
import json
import time
import pandas as pd
import os

# =========================
# CONFIGURATION
# =========================

username = os.environ['USERNAME']

# path to key files
credentials = 'PATH/TO/KEY/github_classroom_api_key.json'
student_list = 'PATH/TO/STUDENTLIST/students2526.xlsx'

# Your GitHub organization name
ORG = "ORGNAME"

# The timeout for all API requests in seconds
REQUEST_TIMEOUT = 10

# =========================
# SCRIPT START
# =========================

# Load Personal Access Token (PAT) from a JSON file
try:
    with open(credentials, 'r') as f:
        config = json.load(f)
        PAT = config['API_KEY']
except FileNotFoundError:
    print(f"Error: The file 'github_classroom_api_key.json' was not found at '{credentials}'.")
    exit()


# Headers for all API requests
HEADERS = {
    "Authorization": f"token {PAT}",
    "Accept": "application/vnd.github.v3+json",
}

# Load student data from the Excel file
try:
    df = pd.read_excel(student_list)
    student_usernames = df['github id'].tolist()
except FileNotFoundError:
    print("Error: The file 'students2526.xlsx' was not found. Please make sure it is in the same directory.")
    exit()


#Go into assignment on github classroom and retrieve these
assignment_name = ASSIGNMENT NAME
forked_repo_url = "https://api.github.com/repos/" + ORG + "/" + assignment_template + '/forks'


for student_username in student_usernames:
    print(f"Processing student {student_username}...")
    repo_name = assignment_name.replace(" ", "-") + '-' + student_username

    # Check if repository exists
    repo_url = f"https://api.github.com/repos/{ORG}/{repo_name}"
    try:
        #-----------------------------------------------------------
        #If the repo already exists but student doesn't have access
        #-------------------------------------------------------------
        response = requests.get(repo_url, headers=HEADERS, timeout=REQUEST_TIMEOUT)
        response.raise_for_status()

        # Check if collaborator exists
        collab_url = f"https://api.github.com/repos/{ORG}/{repo_name}/collaborators/{student_username}"
        permission_url = f"{collab_url}/permission"
        
        permission_response = requests.get(permission_url, headers=HEADERS, timeout=REQUEST_TIMEOUT)

        if permission_response.status_code == 200:
            permission_data = permission_response.json()
            print(f"  -> Collaborator '{student_username}' is already on the repo with '{permission_data['permission']}' permission. Skipping.")
        elif permission_response.status_code == 404:
            print(f"  -> Collaborator not found. Adding '{student_username}'...")
            add_collab_data = {"permission": "push"}
            requests.put(collab_url, data=json.dumps(add_collab_data), headers=HEADERS, timeout=REQUEST_TIMEOUT)
            print("  -> Collaborator added.")
        else:
            print(f"  -> Unexpected error checking collaborator: {permission_response.status_code} - {permission_response.json()}")
    
    except requests.exceptions.HTTPError as e:
        if e.response.status_code == 404:
            print(f"  -> Repository '{repo_name}' not found. Forking it from template...")
            # Use the /forks endpoint to create a fork of the template repo in the organization
            forked_repo_data = {
                "organization": ORG,
                "name": repo_name 
            }
            create_response = requests.post(forked_repo_url, data=json.dumps(forked_repo_data), headers=HEADERS, timeout=REQUEST_TIMEOUT)
            
            if create_response.status_code == 202:
                print(f"  -> Successfully forked repository '{repo_name}'.")
                
                # Adding a small delay to ensure the repo is ready for the next API call
                time.sleep(2)
                
                print(f"  -> Adding '{student_username}' as a collaborator to the new repo.")
                add_collab_url = f"https://api.github.com/repos/{ORG}/{repo_name}/collaborators/{student_username}"
                add_collab_data = {"permission": "push"}
                requests.put(add_collab_url, data=json.dumps(add_collab_data), headers=HEADERS, timeout=REQUEST_TIMEOUT)
                print("  -> Collaborator added.")
            else:
                print(f"  -> Failed to fork repository: {create_response.status_code} - {create_response.json()}")

        else:
            print(f"  -> An HTTP error occurred: {e}")
    
    except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
        print(f"  -> An error occurred: {e}")

print("Script finished.")

0 replies

gris15 · 2026-01-14T22:12:51Z

gris15
Jan 14, 2026

This issue just arose again for my class this week. Here we go

13 replies

ProfMStoica Jan 23, 2026

I've submitted a support ticket with GitHub and will post updates here once I have more information. From my research, this problem appears to be related to the OAuth authorization for the GitHub Classroom app in the organization the classroom is linked to. This can be reproduced by creating a new organization, a new classroom, and a new assignment. When doing so, the GitHub Classroom prompt is not being issued for me, a step that is mandatory and is documented here.

alexander-katrompas Jan 24, 2026

Happening again. It's making using GitHub not worth it. I don't use it to manage my class or code; I use it to teach version control because the students need the experience. But it's just not worth it with these kinds of issues—again. My workaround so far is to go to the students repo (after they email me they have a problem), delete them as a user, and then re-add them. This process emails them a link, which they can use to join the repo. But with 200 students, it's simply not worth the hassle. For the work this takes me, I'd rather just rewrite the assignments to not use GitHub.

RJHorne Jan 26, 2026

I very much concur with @alexander-katrompas this is leaving a very sour taste in the mouth of my students who I am trying to get used to version management.

ProfMStoica Jan 26, 2026

This is the information I received from GitHub Support: they are aware, they are working on it but have no timeline for a fix.

hococoder Jan 28, 2026

This may also be keeping student repos from getting made, at least ones that are forked from starter projects. The bot never sends them an invite to the repo, and it ends up deleting it before they even get a chance to see it! I think I'll send support a message.

catherine-leung · 2026-01-14T22:14:57Z

catherine-leung
Jan 14, 2026

Reposting here from other thread on same issue:

After the trouble I had last semester doing this, I have gone to using "group" assignments. Instead of individual assignments, I create a "group" assignment with a maximum team size of 1 member. this does a few things:

after the first assignment, students join the organization.. they are not external collaborators, thus every future assignment does not require invitation email
for some reason, this process seems to be successful.. possibly because they are not external so the invitation process is simpler? Not sure on this.. maybe I just prayed to the correct interweb gods this time.../shrug
they do have to provide a team name. I have asked mine to use their email username. this puts whatever they type into the url. However, I have found that some don't follow instructions and use first/last name. truthfully this doesn't matter to me so I just let it be the thing they entered
If you choose the same set of teams after the first assignment (where you have to put in a name for the group of teams), the students will automatically just get their repos without having to do the same thing each time.

This has been my work around and it has been pretty consistent.

0 replies

eringutbrod · 2026-01-26T19:50:22Z

eringutbrod
Jan 26, 2026

My students encountered this issue this week. They would accept their assignment and be taken to a page that says, "Repository Access Issue - You no longer have access to your assignment repository. Contact your teacher for support". Not every student had this issue. For those that did, I told them to navigate to this page: https://github.com/settings/organizations
and as long as they were signed into the profile, it would offer another chance to accept the assignment and create the repo. This worked for everyone, it was a simple solution, and didn't require me to do anything.

8 replies

eringutbrod Jan 26, 2026

as long as the student is already signed into their GitHub profile, the page https://github.com/settings/organizations maintains an active list of all pending repo invites from organizations (which GitHub classrooms are organizations). The invitation to accept the assignment is still pending when students are directed to the "Repository Access Issue" page, this is just a trick to access the pending invitation.

ProfMStoica Jan 26, 2026

I see... thank you so much. I will try. This would do the trick instead of them having to check for and accept the invite in their email. My students are receiving email invites, but that is not the case for some of the folks in this thread.

ProfMStoica Jan 30, 2026

For folks whose students are not receiving emails, it might be worth double-checking that they are actually checking the email associated with their GitHub account, which is not usually their school email. I had a few students report that they were not receiving emails, and after some investigation, we found that they were looking at the wrong email Inbox.

If students don't accept the invite, though, in 7 days, it expires, and the only recourse at that point for me was to delete the student and add them again in order for the invite and email to be reissued. I don't know if there is a simpler way to reissue the invite. If there is, I could not find it quickly.

ProfMStoica Mar 4, 2026

The GitHub Classroom Support team closed my ticket, saying they have submitted the issue to their engineering team, with no estimate of when it might be fixed or what is causing it. This is after they posted a few Copilot-generated fixes, which I had already tried to no avail. 👎 . They insisted that there is nothing the support team can do at this time and that they need to close the ticket, while reassuring me that this does not affect the issue's priority. This does not give me any confidence that this issue is being looked at.

What I observed is that once students join a group assignment, they are added to the classroom organization, and they do not have a problem anymore. I guess one workaround is to do this at the start of the course, but there will always be students who are missing that one setup class. Invite emails are consistently generated and sent to student email accounts linked to their GitHub accounts, and this is my current workaround.

g-pyxl Apr 1, 2026

Just to note that I'm still experiencing this issue as of April 2026, and this is probably the simplest workaround I have been able to verify so far. Thank you very much for sharing.

susanettenheim · 2026-01-30T03:49:07Z

susanettenheim
Jan 30, 2026

This just happened to my students today and destroyed our ability to move ahead. I really appreciate this thread and will try it tomorrow. What a mess!!

0 replies

ctnelson1997 · 2026-03-04T15:56:54Z

ctnelson1997
Mar 4, 2026

This issue is still sporadically affecting my students in March. I will be moving off of GitHub at the end of the semester.

1 reply

vincentsijben Mar 4, 2026

it never stopped doing this for my students :(

susanettenheim · 2026-03-04T18:34:02Z

susanettenheim
Mar 4, 2026

What will you use instead?

…

On Wed, Mar 4, 2026, 10:57 AM Cole Nelson ***@***.***> wrote: This issue is still sporadically affecting my students in March. I will be moving off of GitHub at the end of the semester. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#72283 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABHCREZ62GP4OXBXUD3LPBD4PBG55AVCNFSM6AAAAACFHKMTNCVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTKOJZHE2TONA> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

1 reply

ctnelson1997 Mar 4, 2026

I'll just be having students download a ZIP of the starter code and submit their solution to GradeScope instead. They'll lose out on the git experience, but the number of issues I've had with GitHub classroom over the past year no longer make it worth it.

nikmomo · 2026-03-04T19:37:26Z

nikmomo
Mar 4, 2026

I recommend everyone to try https://github.com/nikmomo/GHClassroom.AccessFix
It is being validated in several college classes for 2 semesters. Proved working.

2 replies

ProfMStoica Mar 4, 2026

Thank you, that's good to know. In my case, the email invites are correct, just a nuisance. What I discovered is that students don't always know which email they used to sign up for GitHub, and they don't find their invites because they are looking in the wrong email account (e.g., a school account when their personal account was linked to GitHub). If I start seeing actual broken invites, I'll give this a try.

nikmomo Mar 4, 2026

Thank you, that's good to know. In my case, the email invites are correct, just a nuisance. What I discovered is that students don't always know which email they used to sign up for GitHub, and they don't find their invites because they are looking in the wrong email account (e.g., a school account when their personal account was linked to GitHub). If I start seeing actual broken invites, I'll give this a try.

Students should verify their GitHub account before accepting any homework assignments, since GitHub Classroom currently allows anyone to join a classroom and link to any person.

kellychristopher381-sudo · 2026-03-04T20:58:06Z

kellychristopher381-sudo
Mar 4, 2026

With a class that size, even small hiccups can surface in unexpected ways, have you checked whether it’s a permissions or account-linking issue on GitHub’s side? It might also help to compare the invite flow step-by-step (almost like using LemReveal to spot subtle differences) to see where the process diverges for that student.

0 replies

hotdogontology · 2026-03-05T15:30:55Z

hotdogontology
Mar 5, 2026

My current workaround is:

Have the students accept the assignment
Log out of GitHub
Log back in to GitHub
Check either the email they have associated with their GitHub account OR the Inbox Tray on their GitHub homepage

This gives them access to the repo, but it is frustrating that they do not have access directly after accepting the assignment like they should.

0 replies

mamaoxi · 2026-04-03T06:37:29Z

mamaoxi
Apr 3, 2026

I first searched for the specific repository corresponding to the student. Then, on the Settings page of the repository, under the Collaborator TAB, I found the student. After deleting the student's permissions, I invited again to resend the invitation. If there is no student in Collaborator, just add him, and he will receive an email to verify.
When granting permissions, just write when inviting from the repository. Do not invite to the organization

0 replies

ssyberg · 2026-04-08T21:16:27Z

ssyberg
Apr 8, 2026

Just noting my class this year is experiencing this a ton as well during every assignment/lab, it's quite disruptive. Never happened in previous years for us.

0 replies

ProfMStoica · 2026-04-09T17:23:59Z

ProfMStoica
Apr 9, 2026

My students are all of a sudden getting 500 errors when accepting a GitHub Classroom assignment. This is usually temporary, and they can accept the assignment a few hours or a day later. Is anyone experiencing this problem currently?

1 reply

Gchism94 Apr 9, 2026

Yes, this has honestly been a new one for me (literally 0 instances to maybe a dozen overnight...). It seems that it fixes itself as you state, but there's no fix that I know of on the instructor's end unlike the Repository Access Issue.

Gchism94 · 2026-04-09T17:46:20Z

Gchism94
Apr 9, 2026

Just noting that this has definitely been getting worse, nearly exponentially. I think the easiest fix is adding learners to the GitHub Organization, as suggested above. Easier said than done if doing manually, but there are programmatic solutions:

{ghclass}: Works well if you're an R user.

library(ghclass)

# Example
org_create_team("students")
org_add_member("student_github_username")
repo_create("hw1-template")
repo_copy_to_students(...)

{PyGithub}: Seems to work well for Python, but you can also write scripts using the GitHub REST API

from github import Github
import requests

g = Github("TOKEN")
org = g.get_organization("your-org")

org.add_to_members("student_username")
repo = org.create_repo("assignment-student")
repo.add_to_collaborators("student_username")

Hope this is helpful. I also have written Python scripts to automate some processes from a CSV with student GitHub usernames if anyone is interested.

1 reply

djmandell Apr 23, 2026

I'm interested in seeing your scripts if you don't mind sharing.

sumotoh · 2026-04-21T08:11:06Z

sumotoh
Apr 21, 2026

About half of the students in my class encountered the same issue.

I asked one of them to stay after class so we could check together, and we found that by going to
Settings → Organization → (where the list of assignment repositories is shown) → (Accept)
and clicking the “Accept” button, they were able to access the assignment repository.
(The wording may not be exact, since the student’s page was translated into their native language (Japanese).)

We haven’t tried this with everyone yet, but it’s a very simple step, so it might be worth trying.
If this works for you, please let me know.

3 replies

ProfMStoica Apr 21, 2026

Yes, this fix has been mentioned before, and it works if the Accept interface is present. Alternatively, the students have been sent an email to the email account linked to GitHub, and they can accept from there. The problem is the confusion this causes, but the students get the hang of it. If students' GitHub accounts are added to the organization as members, as is the case when they join a group assignment, the issue seems to disappear altogether. Next semester, I'll be trying to add them to the organization using a script, right after they attempt to join the first exercise.

sumotoh Apr 22, 2026

Thank you for your replay..
This is my first time using GitHub Classroom to manage assignments, so not only the students but I was a bit confused by the situation.
For now, I'm relieved to know this works. I'll share this method with all students in nest week's class and have them try it.

ProfMStoica Apr 23, 2026

It is a pity it worked so poorly this semester, as it was your first time. For a long time, it worked flawlessly, but starting in January, it has indeed been a pain. To be fair, GitHub has been having other problems in Feb and March, so hopefully they are resolved. Students are told right after accepting the assignment that the repository has been removed, which is very confusing. Some folks in this thread experienced a problem where email invites are not sent correctly or at all. I did not have that problem. Email invites have been reliably sent. However, for assignments, some students do not try to solve this problem in time, and the invite does expire after 7 days. If that happens, the invite must be manually reissued by removing and re-adding the student to the repository created when they accepted this assignment.

GitHub Classroom: "Repository Access Issue" #72283

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Hi everyone,

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Replies: 102 comments · 143 replies

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Replies: 102 comments 143 replies

gchallen
Jan 14, 2024
Author