Adobe Trials for Students During Covid

An open letter:

Today my university was the latest to suspend in-person classes in the face of the COVID-19 outbreak.

I teach a large 100-student class at the University of South Carolina in which students rely on using university computer labs that we have equipped with Adobe Creative Cloud tools. Some of my students have their own personal subscriptions to Adobe CC, but many do not.

I can and will not require them to add this expense in the middle of the semester to complete their coursework, and it would be irresponsible of me or my institution to encourage them to use public computer labs as we attempt to minimize infection.

I am planning to retool my projects to allow for free tools for graphics and video, but as a professionally-oriented degree program it is important that the students this semester be exposed to the appropriate tools as students in other semesters would.

Therefore, I would like to publicly ask our colleagues at Adobe to extend free trial licensing for students through the end of the Spring semester. This would allow students to continue their work using the tools intended at the beginning of the semester, without significantly changing projects and strategies, without needing to rely on public labs, and without incurring a surprise additional cost during a public health crisis.

Simon Tarr
President, University Film and Video Foundation
Director of Undergraduate Studies, UofSC School of Visual Art and Design

update: after a groundswell from the academic art and design communities, Adobe did make accommodations to allow for student use of lab licenses at home.