Autodesk are now giving their products away for free to teachers, secondary, college, and university students: http://news.autodesk.com/press-release/autodesk-consumer-group-and-education/autodesk-makes-design-software-free-schools-worl Seems to be pretty much everything including Max, Maya/LT, Mudbox and a ton of other…
That's a lot of money they are not going to be getting anymore. Schools would pay full price for each new version of the autodesk suite, every year, regardless of improvements (or lack thereof). Hope they're okay with that giant hole in their pocket.
Ah, it appears the distinction is that it's now also free for institutions (previously paid) and for use in classes, as well as full secondary school student access (who couldn't use autodesk software for free at all until a few months ago). I presumed from all the noise on techcrunch and the like that it was a bit more of…