Fine, give money for product that microsoft is giving to the school to get you hooked on. Marketing.

If I were you, I'd be using my "learning time" to not get myself embedded with one type of office product. And no, just because the campus uses it mean that the business world will either.

I work for a company that auto loads openoffice on all pc's, sure some of them get MS Office but it's rare and less than 1% of users get it.