Drexel University announced to students late last month that it will no longer be providing licenses for the popular Microsoft Office suite to its students at no cost.
According to the student-run newspaper The Triangle, Drexel’s Chief Information Officer John Bielec is pointing students to free alternatives like Google Docs and Open Office.
As noted in the article, it’s not unusual for colleges to stray from the expensive offer, which would have cost the school more than $1 million to renew for three years, Bielec said.
Students do get access to Office 365, which is Microsoft’s cloud-based document processing suite that it hopes can compete with solutions like Google Docs.