The software is installed on the request of instructors to meet specific needs of classes. The first hard disk section is designed to be automatically put back to a known good state on at least a daily basis. Every one of the ACS managed PC and Mac workstations has a designated workspace. The smallest one is bigger than a floppy disk, and many are large enough to work with the most demanding graphics work. On PC's be sure you use the logout icon in the acs utilities folder when you are done to prepare the workspace for the next user.
Floppy disks are easy to carry and fast to use, but unfortunately are also mechanically fragile.
More often than a particular brand, a production batch of disks is more prone to data errors. Pre-formatted floppy disks may actually be more reliable if freshly formatted again before use. Also the plastic that makes up the base supporting the rust that makes up a magnetic floppy disk is temperature sensitive. The cumulative error of temperature variations alone may make some files only readable on the one disk drive that wrote that file. A speck of house dust or a human hair are much bigger than the largest amount of contamination or surface defect that can be ignored by a floppy disk drive.