IMHO, this has more to do with competition from open source apps like Penpot. If they don’t have a free tier for students, students will get accustomed and to the alternative.

It's always been Adobe's approach, get em hooked, snuff out competition (or just straight up acquire them), push educators toward materials that are software specific instead of more vague, then push for sales and sue firms using bootleg versions.

After using Figma a fair bit at work and Penpot at home, man the Penpot team is really doing some cool work that I can see rivalling Figma in no time

And when everyone uses or is forced to use the product, they can actively start enshitifying it and squeeze every penny of their users...

Dead simple to run via docker compose too. I got it up and running with LDAP in less than an hour

Upvotes for penpot

It's not "for teenagers"; opening it to schoolkids is just a long-term marketing tactic to capture the next generation of creatives.

Joe MAMA!

Adobe hasn’t acquired it yet, and the pricing basing changed much. Like always, you get a few free projects, but you have to pay to have infinite projects and admin tools. The latter has always cost money. I know, I pay for 70 licenses.