I disagree. It's one reason for them to try a free software package, decide that it sucks (it lacks most of the interesting libraries), and go back to using Mat

I disagree. It's one reason for them to try a free software package, decide that it sucks (it lacks most of the interesting libraries), and go back to using Matlab forever. If on the other hand they were introduced to the python stack, which has a superior language and a lot of neat libraries (though not yet on par with Matlab), they might have a chance of sticking to it.