I mean, underpaid IT aside, do they need to be better than the students?

We like to organize school like there’s rules, you follow them, and if you do better it must be because you are better.

But thats not how the world works, and it’s not how technology works - it’s all about understanding the system and looking for loopholes

Is it better to enforce absolute control though? It teaches you nothing but how to be a good cog in the machine.

Teaching you that the rules aren’t absolute, but requires skill and legwork gives you a mindset to actually succeed in our warped little resource allocation game. Instead you should teach them to consider the effects - if they crash the network, make school suck for everyone for a few days.

But as to your original point, you still need an admin who can at least manage the network, and they should be given the funds to pay for that