Hi:
Try checking out some of the troubleshooting tips on this page:
https://support.sas.com/software/products/university-edition/faq/trouble_error_cannot_connect.htm and if that doesn't work, this forum has a lot of University Edition users who might have encountered this issue before.
Your other alternative to get quick access to SAS is to switch to a SAS OnDemand for Academics account as an independent user. There are zero downloads for this method. All you need is a browser, an active Internet connection and an OnDemand account, then you can access SAS Studio and SAS on our cloud server for non-commercial learning purposes. The Programming 1 and Statistics 1 free classes all have instructions for how to make the data using either University Edition or SAS OnDemand for Academics.
Here's the site to start the access for SAS OnDemand:
https://www.sas.com/en_us/software/on-demand-for-academics.html -- follow the independent learner instructions.
Cynthia