I would encourage students to get Photoshop Elements and when they
feel limited by it move on to Photoshop. If you do lots of work with
images and need to automate tasks, prepare images for magazine quality
printing and more then you need Photoshop.
The education price of Elements is about $60. You can't go wrong with
it. I have both and use Elements most of the time because that's what
I teach.
Harold
Harold Olejarz
Blog - digitalharold.blogspot.com
Website - www.digitalharold.com