Starting this fall semester, LSU students were granted free range of all Adobe apps including Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator and InDesign.
These programs are often required for students majoring in art, design, mass communication, some sciences and other areas. Now they won’t have to worry about Adobe’s monthly payments sneaking up on their bank accounts.
This change was brought through a resolution by Emma Long, a political communication and political science junior who is speaker pro tempore of LSU’s Student Government.
She found, through research, that other colleges were paying for or partnering with Adobe for a free program on behalf of their students. Long thought LSU should join in.
Long pushed this initiative in the Student Senate last year, with the help of Lizzie Shaw, who was then SG president. Shaw also advocated for free Adobe access with the Board of Regents and the Information Technology Services.
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Before this initiative, students had to pay $19.99 per month in the promotional period of their Adobe subscription, which was bumped to $29.99 per month when that period ended a year later. There was often a cancellation fee if a student decided they couldn’t pay or dropped the class. For some required courses, Adobe is mandatory.
Jennifer Macha-Hebert, an adjunct professor in visual communication, said she’s excited her students now have this required resource for free.
“When I originally began teaching courses that required the use of Adobe, we had [free] desktop computers both in the classroom and in a lab that had all the software,” she said. “As technology advanced, we moved to a laptop policy, in which students had to pay for the cost of the Adobe subscription.”
Macha-Hebert thinks this new, free access to Adobe will help students to stick with their creativity and practice graphic design, as well as “give students a strong competitive advantage in the job market because they will have more than just a base level knowledge of the software.”
The access lasts for a year and can be renewed. The software can be used anywhere by downloading it to a personal computer or can be easily accessed through an LSU login code on any device.
