I appreciate Bill Gould's comments on my particular licensing
situation. As he suggested I called StataCorp to verify my licensing
information and unfortunately (for me), confirmed what I wrote
yesterday.
We are currently ordering heavily discounted student lab versions of
Stata. We have purchased ten copies at an individual cost of $180--a
terrific value for our students. Our division labs have ordered more
copies for their labs. I use these labs to teach 1) a class in Stat
programming and 2) two statistics courses that require Stata. So far,
so good.
Reasonably enough, I am not eligible for the $180 student lab license
to use on my office and home computers. However, as a faculty member
at the University of Maryland I am eligible for a discounted license
for Stata through their GradPlan. I have used this to purchase my
past copies of Stata. Currently the cost of a Stata SE license
through the GradPlan for me is about $425.
The institutional specific glitch I have is that my department is
unwilling to spend $425 for a license for my use. So, it is not that
Stata does not provide an educational discount (they do and it is
large, but that my University is unwilling to pay that amount for me
to have the same version as the students for teaching purposes. This
has led to some discussion of alternative, less expensive, statistical
software applications.
You can understand some of the issues here. As a department we are
satisfied with Stata and have invested time and effort in using (and
promoting) Stata with our students. I have had to use multiple
statistical applications over the years in both teaching and research.
Personally, I don't want to reinvent the wheel one more time. But,
we shall see.
Best,
Alan
.
>
> Alan Neustadtl <[email protected]> asked about licensing for
> student labs. This is different than the standard, network, concurrent
> license that Al asked about. These licenses are explicitly limited to
> education use in student lab networks and are priced accordingly, which is to
> say, dirt cheap. StataCorp does not provide software for monitoring lab
> use, but we do not prevent you from using such software as many labs do.
>
> Alan wrote that he personally could not use the lab license (outside the
> lab) and was not covered by the GradPlan. Evidently there has been some
> miscommunication. All students and faculty at The U. of Maryland are covered
> by the GradPlan there. Alan can purchase on the GradPlan. When StataCorp
> receives any order from anyone known to be from the U. of Maryland, or from
> any university or college participating the GradPlan, StataCorp fulfills the
> order at GradPlan prices unless the order would be cheaper under standard
> academic pricing. That sometimes happens because upgrading a Stata 10 to
> Stata 11 for a recent purchaser is cheaper at upgrade academic pricing than
> purchasing a new copy on the GradPlan.
>
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