How can I remove the association of an AppleID with a Mac?

Hi,

me and my colleague are Sysadmins at a University in Germany. We run and manage several MacBooks for students and staff. One student has left and left the Mac Book the department provided for them, with the Mac still associated with their AppleID account. We wish to reset the Mac so we can give it to someone else to use.

Usually in a case like this, we have the AppleID and Password, but not in this case.

My colleague has tried everything with this MacBook; even to reformat the Macs Disk from Recovery mode and so on, but apparently the Mac always ends up being associated with the AppleID, and without the password for the AppleId, we seemingly cannot break this association.

We understand that this is for security reasons and there is good reason for it to be like this.

But what if you have a legitimate reason to remove the association such as in this case?

Of course, the Student has left and is no longer reachable (this was some time ago).

So our question to the community is: is there a legitimate way to break the association to that AppleID without having the AppleIDs password?

The MacBook is ours so this is legitimate.

Do we need to take it to the Applestore?

Can Apple remove the asociation, if we show proof of purchase?

Thanks!