Yeah, I agree that it would be nice for Adobe to have a free offering for students. I recently signed up and am using 3DS Max as a student. It's reasonable, as they give you a three year license for free, with the restrictions that you can't use it for commercial work. I think they got it right. Personally, I love Blender, which is a great free alternative.
This really is a silly question in the first place. Obviously this will be one of those discussions that go nowhere. Still, speaking from personal experience, if you do anything with the software that you can profit from, you better be using the licensed version. If you don't, it will catch up with you.