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I can’t agree. You could perhaps say Matlab is the default/non-critically-analyzed choice for academia. GNU Octave uses the same language as Matlab. A student who masters GNU Octave will be able to use Matlab just fine.
IIRC, Matlab’s significant difference is Simulink. So if a class actually intends to cover Simulink then it’d perhaps be fair enough for just that class to use Matlab. But even that’s not ideal. Ideal would be the school paying students to add what’s needed in GNU Octave.