Theres no realy way round it as maya isnt backwards compatable, I think you have to save your scene as a .ma file then open it in notepad (or any text editor, not a word processing app though) then change where it has 8.0 or 8.5 into the version that they have at uni.
I think that there might be a converter that someone made knocking arround, probably worth a google.
"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle