I would like to voice two thoughts. To begin with, I will say that DreamSpark did not use it, but I think you should hardly be afraid of special problems with registration. However, I'm not talking about that.
Necessary clarification: everything that will be said below refers to the development tools. I take the liberty to believe that you are asking a question on the programmer’s forum about this kind of software.
If we are talking about Microsoft development tools (as long as you started talking about DreamSpark) In 99.9% of cases, the student has enough express versions of Microsoft products to complete his tasks. I can hardly imagine the student’s tasks in which he would need something. not included in the Exprress edition. Is that without third-party plug-ins like Resharper'a not so convenient to work
If we are talking about software from other companies. The market is teeming with free development tools. Starting from the "childish" PascalABC and ending with more than the "older" Eclipse, Intellij Idea. You can also pay attention to the project Mono. And this diversity is not only among the IDE, but also other necessary tools for the developer.
That is, all of the above has the following moral in itself - even if for some reason it does not merge with DreamSpark (for example, all your students will lose their student cards) there are a lot of exits and in addition to this program