Theft is theft, but survival is survival. You do what you have to do, just don't get caught. Seriously, when a society is so skewed that people have to steal to survive, that society only deserves thieves, and ultimately a revolution.

The same goes for software piracy. The publisher wont loose any money over something that would never be sold (to a student) in the first place. There is only one word for this; greed. The whole problem, however, is easily solved with open source.