The vm has “tools” preloaded and helps students experiment with configurations that don’t end up causing the host computer to be badly configured. The host PCs are pretty restrictive and have no admin privileges. The VM is fully capable of being “free to mess with” in a sense. The idea behind it is to prevent unauthorized bad actions on the host pc. Creating a separation of students’ abilities behind a vm. You can use your own PC, but that is cumbersome and unnecessary. The “forced to” is a bit loose, but it helps students start from a state where the teacher can help guide the students to what to do.

Good thing you’re not a teacher then!

Edit: LMFAO the downvotes are astounding! So let’s make students install VMWare… Who’s gunna pay for that? It’s funny because I actually did work full time lecturing in an R1 institution in several classes that required virtualization. It’s really not hard to publish different images for all the major vm platforms.