Where is out here? There are universities that use UNIX platforms, and most of these have GNU software.
For what it is worth, I was on Faculty at a State University in Charlotte, North Carolina (that should be specific enough) for ten years in the engineering school. They had built a remarkably large network based on sun-solaris boxes running afs. I chaired the computer committee and saw, first hand, how a fearful faculty can destroy innovation. The standard complaint was the the unix was not preparing our students for the working world. Of course this was nonsense. But the consistent complaining led to the introduction of large NT labs at the expense of the UNIX side. We had a system admin in CS that put together a really beautiful lab filled with Linux boxes (yes, debian) that were connected to sun servers. The result was very inexpensive machines that ran the sun-based applications like FrameMaker faster than the sun boxes did and were dual boot to satisfy the NT-weenies. However, the sitting faculty seemed not up to the task of learning how to use them, so the idea never left the CS department. At any rate, I'm fairly sure that you could use free software in any of the really valuable CS courses there. Arthur H. Edwards 712 Valencia Dr. NE Abq. NM 87108 (505) 256-0834