For most, they're up to your employer. If everyone I interview knows AutoCAD because they all learned AutoCAD in college, I'm probably going to purchase AutoCAD. Companies provide those steep discounts to students because they want to condition you, not because it's good PR. And it's such an effective strategy that you never even have to consider that other programs exist, let alone that they could be worth your time.

Considering that, I have to agree it is unethical in this case to teach proprietary software

Youre going to see Fusion360 and Solidworks in fabrication, but people aren't designing building models in Solidworks.

In the context of free vs proprietary software, schools are not going to avoid Autodesk products, or they would be outputting people who arent familiar with the industry standard tools. In a collaborative environment, when firms are sharing drawings, standardization of product is going to arise. Even if AutoCAD isnt the best product, it is entrenched for a while longer, and more than likely Autodesk owns the replacement firms will choose when the time comes. Schools will adapt accordingly.

While it is true that you can't avoid autodesk completely, you can no problem until at least second year in college. There is zero reason a high school can't avoid autodesk, and as educators they should.

Autocad is such a shit product, I have to think the only reason it still exists is because engineers are stubborn and just stick with what they know. Autodesk knows this, which is why they are more than willing to give it away to schools.

This is still good, learning AutoCAD is better than learning no CAD for future engineers imo.

This was my favourite comment here. And it captures the participatory essence of the Stallman article. But nowhere on this page of comments did I see the concept of "digital literacy" mentioned - and how schools that do not bring at least a critical discussion to their choice of OS/SaaS/PaaS etc are failing and behind the times. If this discussion is not happening in schools, where is it going to happen?

Lots of mention on this page went to how much/whether programming knowledge is needed for the free/open software. To this discussion, and to return to the comment at the incipit, even the smallest offering of access to coding can - through experience (to get all John Deweyean here) - transform students from users into makers. A very basic example would be the difference between the Google Classroom UI and a wiki interface (PM wiki, Doku wiki) which by default puts more emphasis on the student and their collaborative role.

And Dewey noted (Problems of Men, 1946, p.61) that it is society's loss if the educational system is not providing ample opportunity for students to discover their voice and where their talent lies. In conclusion, the passivity involved in using certain apps further blocks the potential for interdisciplinary exploration, in at least one or two class components. But here I am giving a poor man's rendition of Engelbart's vision.

I'm more curious because I banned Windows and Apple (at least if I'm paying for it), but I let the Chromebooks stay. My son has learned a lot about Linux and life on the CLI getting Minecraft to run in the Debian container on our Chromebook.

I recognize all the contributions Google has made, and overall I think they are a lot better than other companies, but at the end of the day they are a company and their end goal is making money and not always what is best for my kids and society in general. I tried wiping chromeOS and putting Linux on, but the whole container thing annoyed me and reminded me of the PS3.. At any minute, Google can kill this functionality. So I opted to drop it completely in favor of old thinkpads and ubuntu.

If your kids like Minecraft, I cannot suggest enough the "learning Python with minecraft" book and optionally the Udemy course for teaching kids python. In 3 months, both my 8 and 10 year old are building skyscrapers with a few lines of code. It has been a huge creative outlet for them. Bonus if you have them do it on a raspberry pi

Thank you, I will check it out! I just retired and older Pi from production that would be perfect for this actually...

Suppose it doesn't though, I don't agree that it is knee capping students. My school started teaching CAD in 10th grade, and at that point you are just learning the basics like GD&T, so it isnt that important if the CAD package can make 1000 part assemblies and sub assemblies. You can teach all the basics with FreeCAD, no problem

You're right, FreeCAD can handle the basics nicely. I was coming at this with my experience from university, where I don't think FreeCAD is good enough yet.

I want FreeCAD to be better; I financially support the development in a small way.

How is this relevant? Yes, your school should teach you the software that will be useful to you outside academia.

If anything, this idea seems counter to Stallman's has hard line stance.

I work in a +1$B company in AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) and our designers and engineers use AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor, 3DSMax, KeyShot, Unity, Solidworks, Rhino, SketchUp, plus the entire Adobe Suite. The Autodesk tools represent probably 75% of the install base.

I agree that learning the concepts is more important on where and what to click in any particular software set. But in AEC, Autodesk is king.