M. Adam Davis <stienman <at> gmail.com> writes:
> Most community colleges have computer labs that provide all these
> resources for students.  Only in the case where the student cannot or
> will not use the provided equipment do they need to spend money on
> something else, and in that case the onus is on them the figure out
> their options and costs.

I strongly disagree. The college provides what is needed on campus *and* for
home use *or* it specifies what is needed and must be bought by all students.
The availability of m$ office on college computers combined with the requirement
for it to be also used outside it (f.ex. for homework) is an invitation to
software piracy. I do not need to explain why.
 
> These are adults we're talking about.  Sometimes when you don't
> understand something you take a hard fall, but this isn't the end of
> the world, and could have been sorted out the first week of class with
> a minimum of fuss.
> 
> Your further points about the cost of the software being huge are not
> valid either - Students can get all that software at a huge discount,
> and larger schools have free licensing programs for it.

Aha, and they are 'free' because m$ gives licenses away, or because their price
is built into the tuition ? What do you think ? So, a course in 'accounting'
using only software running on m$ is actually a pre-sales course in 'accounting
on m$ software only, and buying and upgrading that software forever after during
one's subsequent career', yes ? Does this sound like 'company town, company
school, company store' just to me alone ? How about doing it the other way
around, buying a m$ accounting  package and *then* selecting a course that
teaches it, so one reduces the confusion and maximizes the emphasis on the
actual program, since that, and only that, is what will be used anyway ? Of
course we all know why this is not done. A community college can charge more for
an 'accounting course' than for a 'm$ *** software course'. Oops. Oh, and it
looks better in statistics, for the college, the county, and for the taxpayer's
contribution (which covers a significant part of tuition costs for most local
and vocational colleges). I am sure they could not justify all that tax money
for buying licenses from a company without some kind of competition or other
type of competitive bidding. Re-oops. Which, by the way, may mean that community
taxes and tuition fees subsidize one and only one software maker twice over:
once directly, through the software cost that is in part covered by said tax
contributions (since it is 'provided by the college' - and the subject of a
mega-dollar bulk license purchase contract from said software company, without
any competition or bidding for alternatives), and a second time by making it
mandatory for all students and a limiting purchase option. I guess I just
godwin-ed this thread, by going into politics.

As a rather heavy computer user who has switched and is switching OS's as 
needed between CP/M, MS-DOS, WfWG 3.11, W95, Vista, Linux, Solaris, NetBSD and
OpenBSD (and soon Opensolaris and Max OSX), and has had to underbid ridiculously
low offers to get things done more than once, I am disgusted by such
arrangements in 'higher education'. 19th century Dickensian pond scum is a high
life form compared to the political shenanigans pulled of by certain 'company
schools' who claim to be 'community' and 'public service' institutions (often
with disgusting tax benefits due to that).

Peter


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