You can simply use your programs you've bought. You're not (!) forced to go buy a CC account. The latest bought versions of Adobe will still be updated, Adobe has promised to so. Only after a year or so when CC is so much progressed they will stop updating the versions you've bought. But still then you can use Lightroom you've bought as long you like.
I don't find the excuse that things going bad economically a solid one. If things go bad economically wise then you can't spend hundreds of dollars as well for buying a program that at some point will have payed updates as well. It's about having money or not. As for my own company I've saved up reserves for paying expenses like software to begin with. Because I want to be up to date I save money up to hundreds of euro's (in my case euro's) each year so I know that I always will be able to buy update. Instead of paying everything in one single payment I pay a small percentage each month which basically is the same as when I would pay up front.
I can also subtract the payments I make from taxes, so the actual prizes are in reality even way lower then you see on the Adobe website because because I'm paying Adobe I can pay less taxes each year. For education it's even better, schools, in Holland that is, can even subtract WAY more then I can do each year being a commercial company....
If your company, or any to be precise, don't have the budget to pay a monthly prize then you can still use the old software. You couldn't update your old software in the old system as well because that would cost you money as well...
You can only argue that at some point you might have just enough money for updating one software program and despite being broke then you can use it for a while further on. But there is a thin line between able to buy updates, a CC account and the argument of not having enough money. In short, you can't blame Adobe for your financial issues if any.
You would need to make priorities as any company does. Like you need to save financial reserves for basic things you need like electricity, payments for the people cleaning your school/company, salary for the teachers and the money for renting the license of software your students are working with.
If money is short, then you can decide to work on old versions you have now, or you could decide to cut finances on other fronts to get more money for CC accounts. It's about priorities.
New software cost money, either using CC or not CC to begin with. Updates cost money. A good organized school would have a list of priorities and a good overview of the cost. Based on that you make decisions. But you can't, again, blame Adobe, that they're not giving the software for free. I know you don't but most of the negative responses I read here are all on the same thing: it cost money and I dare to state that many among the reactions are using illegal software and feel suddenly very much restricted which I can imagine.
For those who actually pay for their software, I'm among them, just know that the cost are not that much higher then it would be when buying the new software on disk. On top of that you get more updates, free to use hundreds of commercial fonts worth $25.000, online space to share you work with others and clients a much much better workflow because everything, like settings, are being synced on all your devises, etc. The list of benefits is long.
And once again, if you're using bought software, I've got CS6 Master Collection, you can still use that and for the coming year it will be still be update but only concerning bugs. I decided to switch to CC anyway because I like the workflow and the extra's it offers. I'm not a billionaire, just a graphical and an interaction designer myself but luckily with a company that's financial healthy and like most companies do I also save up money for the cost to come.
Meanwhile, I get access to all of Adobe's products and because I earn money with it I find it nothing more then reasonable to spend some money each month on the company so they can provide me with even better software.
Under the old system as well as long you don't decide to update.
Yes and no. Yes, most of the old materials will work on CC versions yes. You might aspect issues the other way around. But that was also the case in the "old" model where C6 materials would sometimes cause issues when using it on a CS3 version. But you can, like in the old model, still save materials within CC as a CS5 document in order to be able to load it on an older version. That's what I've been told by Adobe themselves.
There are several ways to "create" money in order to get those licenses. It's not up for me to decide which ways you should take. But materials, machines, software cost money, weather you're buying a license or when you need to rent it. Each school and firm need to understand that. There is no such thing as running an office without having any expenses to make.
