[chii]

> The software that students use is the software the industry uses about five years later.

which is why it's anti-competitive for a company to sponsor university courses (such as providing educational versions for free). It should be disallowed, unless the course is _specifically_ teaching the software, rather than a general course.

[paulddraper]

That's competitive, not anti-competitive.

Anti-competitive means others are not allowed to do the same.

[chii]

> others are not allowed to do the same.

it's usually the case where the sponsor is the sole sponsors (aka, the course does not teach both X and Y, esp. if X is given to the uni for free).

It's anti-competitive to allow companies to embed themselves in general courses, despite it not being so by the letter of the laws.

[zamfi]

Sort of -- but basically no course is going to teach X and Y, if they're functionally equivalent ways to learn about Z, because almost no course is specifically about X or Y, it's about Z, and learning both X and Y isn't germane to learning Z, just learning one is enough.

As long as the companies behind X and Y both have a fair shot at sponsorship, this isn't really anti-competitive. It's literally a competition in which the companies compete for student and faculty attention.

Anti-competitive would be a company saying "you must teach X and not Y in your class about Z because you use Xco's mail services" or some other such abuse of one contractual relationship for an unrelated gain.

[paulddraper]

They say "hey if you want to teach a class using X, we'll sponsor it."

A competitor can complete for that sponsorship. So long as it's done on direct merit of the value, there's no problem.

Anti-competitive would be providing products or services and forcibly leveraging that into an unrelated contract.