There was a famous story about some University's computer lab (I forget the details) where they got fed up of the coffee machine. There was a perfectly good cafeteria close by where the students could get coffee. Plus they had to keep the machine stocked, service it, etc. It was just a pain in the ass, so they got rid of it.

Within about a week, their TAs were swamped with demands on their time from students. They had to take on like 2 extra people to meet the demand.

Turned out, that coffee machine was a social hub, and people would chat about their problems, ask each other for tips and advice, and solve a large percentage of their problems on their own.

So they bought a replacement coffee machine.

Now I'm imagining those students doing all the work on their computers in their dorm rooms on their own. Hmm.

Sure, there's lots more connectivity these days and places you can ask for help, but when learning/starting out that sort of personal contact etc is quite useful.

It also comes down to standardization - if I'm marking circuit layouts, I want everyone to use the same version of Electric that I did, so it's easy for me to deal with fifty submissions. I want everyone to compile their code using the same environment, so that I can simply recreate that environment and know that the code should compile.