It’s bound to get cheaper, because it already has. When I was in uni (2000), it was right at the end of the time you needed to buy a Silicon Graphics terminal to run Alias ($30k+). Now, you can get Alias Design for $3k / year.
As for students and software, it does happen that they are a catalyst for change. There is a transportation company that was using only Rhino, but one of their new hires from CCS showed them Alias on his laptop a few times. They were impressed and I believe they bought a license to try it out.
Closer to home, my first job was using an old license of Inventor. We switched to SolidWorks within 6 months of me starting!