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.