Depends on the course I think. But 8Gb is more than enough to run a Java 'Hello World' GUI app or even something heavier. Students don't - as a rule - get to deal with millions of lines codebases.

I don’t know if you’re serious but a Java Swing all that’s simple should not consume more than 8 Mb, let alone GB!

Just tried out a simple Java Swing popup and it uses 6Mb of heap so that's allright then ;). (on my machine it will reserve 160Mb of memory for thread stacks, code caches, buffers and GC but that won't be a problem unless you use it) In the 90s I also thought that was wasteful (my first PC had 32Mb). Nowadays with Electron apps taking up gigabytes it doesn't seem that bad anymore.

Yes but only comp sci ones do - and if you are doing that then you need more than a base computer.

Students in non STEM areas will not usually need more than writing and reading tools.