I worked for a university in the IT department for a few years. Everything we implemented needed to work for Windows and Mac devices. For mobile, both iOS and Android were supported.

Students were free to purchase whatever hardware they wanted. At the end of the day they could get their studies done on either device. The only courses that required an apple computer were the iOS development class, and with Swift becoming more popular I believe there’s a way to do that on windows now. Either way if a student did not have access to an apple computer there were entire labs with apple devices they could use.

Universities are not mandating apple hardware. Not by a long shot. Maybe your anecdotal experience is different but I can assure you that is not the norm.