It is not that any employee can just purchase things in academia (at least in 3 different countries I worked at). Most money and purchasing power, approvals go to official-administrators (even if Professors take efforts to apply and receive grants). Spending is highly regulated. There were times I was denied buying RHEL telling me to use a 'free linux'. There is a wide belief (among official-administrators) Linux is free so paying for it is the employee wasting money. To even encourage Dell's linux server offerings I once purchased a few preinstalled RHEL devices but was later asked why not use free ones (or the windows dell offerings as they were strangely cheaper - thanks to bloatware).
At the same if you say you need to buy a windows server or zoom license this will be approved as these people know that it is not free. Their society is conditioned in this way.
In the rare case if this was approved, usually there are external auditors that analyse spent money and come back at you for not using free linux.
Ideally Canonical and RedHat (via IBM) goes to these administrators (or meetings in Ministry of Education) and advise them that making software is $$.