Well, if you're working to pay your rent, bills, and food expenses, and you're only working part time (because you're a full time undergraduate student), you may not have a lot left over to pay for software licenses.

which is precisely the reason I went with linux: so I could maximize my hardware resources while eliminating license costs. By not buying whatever MS compiler in those days, I was able to max out my workstation with 32MB RAM.

Working in undergrad and having thousands left over after paying for food and a place to sleep certainly can't be assumed to be. That's where my pay went.

I was very fortunate to not have to pay tuition or board, but if I had to, I wouldn't have spent my money to pay for that (I would have taken out loans) and still spent my money on RAM.