Until the curruculum committee meets, often just yearly, and approves any tools to substitute or add, the existing ones remain. If a committee perceives future employers find Mathlab and Labview skills a plus, and now they have been substituted or eliminated, will it be a handicap? How much evaluation exams or skills test are tied into a tool? Many schools, for example, do not approve of Wikipedia for reasons outlined here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=142109161313 You can disagree, but administration generally makes all the rules. Its the speed of bureaucracy. When I was in college I was the transition group to last use slide rule and math tables. The committee didn't know how to deal with it; in a relatively short time it would make obsolete a skill taught for over 100 years to technical majors. Calculators were widespread, but it was still not approved. At 09:34 AM 12/6/2010, shalimr9@gmail.com wrote: >I don't understand why the university would force the students to >use Matlab (even though they provide a free login, this login >expires when the class is over) when quality free tools like Octave >are available.