As far as the PLE go, the way I see it, if you don't make any money on what you make then it's ok. As far as the competitions here, I've seen people using PLE, so no problems there I guess...

Don't really know anything about academic license, but my guess would be that the same rules apply, or at least that if it's ok to use PLE then it's ok to use academic too...

Just curios, what does Maya cost when you're a fulltime student?