The next step for Waikto Uni is to fix their site can be used with browsers other than IE. Then to knock out mandated .doc and .xls assignment submissions. These things hinder Linux acceptance among otherwise willing students.
.doc and .xls are only mandated by the Department (or probably the lecturer) in question - it is not a University policy. Not only do most assignment submissions in the CS department (where I'd suggest the highest concentration, or even *any* concentration of linux users is likely to be found) NOT mandate .doc or .xls, in many cases formats other than .doc are mandated such as PDF, RTF, HTML or even *shock* plain text
These are pet peeves of mine, as my missus can't drop IE/Windows completely since she still needs them to do University work.
I'm sure OpenOffice can save in a format that word or excel will read. I agree though, it is frustrating. When I was applying for my position in WAND, I couldn't read the job description because it was a .doc file and I didn't have easy access to MS Word at the time. Many other important documents were distributed in .doc format as well. This is changing however - more and more University policy documents are in PDF, or both PDF and .doc. WLUG has also talked with someone from the Management school, and one of the topics that came up was open standards. I'm not sure if anything has happened yet, but a few horror stories regarding the .doc format were enough to convince at least one lecturer that other formats should be used for important documents. When it gets down to it though, if you want your work to be marked you need to get it to the marker in a way they can read. Patience