CompuServe Thread

I realize that you are probably not the correct person to send this to but I hope you can get it to the correct person(s) to address my problems/concrens. I am a teacher at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture. We have taught AutoCAD since release 9. I was a student at the school and learned much of what I know from my experiences there. I am writing to express my concerns about the current Educational pricing and general attitude of the company. I recently changed full time jobs (I am an adjunct), and was asked to learn MicroStation PC. After a few months working there I was talking with some of the full time faculty and they asked me what I thought, I told them that everywhere I interviewed was using MicroStation . They asked what I thought of it, I said that there were good and bad points but that AutoCAD was still better. They then went to the Dean and talked and the next thing I knew I was being asked to prepare to teach MicroStation. While we will still be teaching AutoCAD as our main program we are offering MicroStation as an elective. One of the other issues is pricing. Any student, faculty or staff member can buy AutoCAD for $900 or so, the school pays more than that. I bought a copy of 3D Studio for $800 or so, the school pays $1500. A student can buy MicroStation that includes many of the features of both packages for $150. What wrong with that picture? If I was a student buying a computer for school and wanted to have legal copies of the software I was going to use what do you think I would buy? No matter how big of a market share you quote ( I guess its around 70%) the choice comes down to the Almighty buck. I buy MicroStation. I learn MicroStation, I graduate, I use MicroStation. MicroStation is doing exactly what you did a long time ago, making all new graduates literate in their software. Like most schools our budget is very limited while corporate America can pay out $3000 for a program, asking the schools to teach a program that costs 10 times what the competition is asking is a bit of a stretch. When we add machines instead of adding $150 per station we now need to budget $2500 per station. That severely limits our expansion if we are to stick with AutoCAD. I realize that you need to make a buck too, but what is the continued dominance of a market worth? I still use and prefer AutoCAD over MicroStation but I could also learn to like the $750 that I would save by using MicroStation. I hope that AutoCAD never needs to include a MicroStation import feature, but maybe it might not be a bad idea to start working on it now, just in case.