Note that some universities offer free licenses of such software to their students.

@Wrzlprmft Our school does provide free license for several softwares such as SPSS and MS Office, but it seems that we haven't bought Mathematica yet :(

Does your school have computer rooms with the required software installed that you can use as alternative?

@J.Doe We have computer rooms, but I've never seen a computer on which Mathematica is installed. (I personally suspect that softwares such as PS and AE installed on computers there are cracked distributions)

A teacher that teaches a course specifically about Mathematica without the proper license simply shouldn't teach that course. I bet that Mathematica offers special licenses for this kind of situation so they shouldn't be that expensive to obtain. I know in my university we were able to obtain some tens of free licenses for students that were taking a course like this.

Is BSA still a thing? I would raise my concerns, bring the free/cheaper academic licenses to the table and finally mention BSA to the teacher or a superior. Software cost is no excuse to pirate it.

I'm guessing that the reach of the Business Software Alliance in China (where OP seems to be located) is minimal. Perhaps as part of the IIPA they'd like to change that, though.

What are the copyright laws in YOUR country? Some countries do not have any laws on software copyright.

@user4050 I'm not familiar with the copyright laws in China, and am not really interested in reading through the legal documents. However, I believe software cracking is immoral in all countries.

What are PS and AE?

@v7d8dpo4 PS = Photoshop, AE = After Effects. Both are Adobe company's products. They are very powerful, but very expensive.

@sunqingyao Your question says "While it is true that software cracking is inappropriate and even illegal". The questions "My teacher is doing something illegal, what should I do?" and "My teacher is doing something I find immoral, what should I do?" are both valid questions, but the answers are potentially quite different.

Look out for open source alternatives and suggest your teacher to use these. You never know what a closed source program does in the background and it even gets worse, if you start executable cracks. Many of these contain viruses. With an open source program you can learn how to use it and later even how to improve it, because you can report and fix bugs, or implement new functions. Is PS Photoshop? Then look at gimp for example.

@Ian_Fin That's a hard question for me to answer. After some searching, I think we can assume that distributing cracked software is illegal in China. For more information, I've asked a question. Let's hope there would be some feedback.

Well that only means distributing cracked software is illegal. I doubt cracking software in China faces any sort of legal repercussions. Even in the states it is a civil matter. So I seriously doubt that cracking this software to use is "illegal" in China. It is just a copyright violation in the US (which again is a civil matter - not talking distribution). I would start with email the folks at Mathematica and seeing what they say.

China and eastern Asia in general doesn't really do anything at all about copyright. The bootleg market over there is very lucrative, and code/concepts/products are regularly stolen and copied, and I doubt anyone intends to do anything about it. It is to the point where giant software companies simply refuse to sell in China, or have to implement additional DRM compared to the rest of the world (as Microsoft does with its products over there). Really the only thing you can do if you don't agree is buy your own license.

software license-skip is illegal, you shouldnt crack these softwares but you can use any provided crack at your own responsability because cracks are widely-known to be local system threats, just see how much the burden of illegal jump over copyrights some companies underwent, hence bankrupt, it is so unaffordable

Oh, wonderful. I wanted to leave an answer on a couple of options to use Mathematica legally without a license and this question is protected. :( Of course the association bonus does not count.

@AndreaLazzarotto - I hear your pain. I unlocked the question for you; we can just delete any (more) junk answers we get in the interim.

Higher-Education Licensing by Wolfram for Mathematica

@DrunkenCodeMonkey: from what I know, it isn't limited to Asia, but some countries in Europe too (have been there). It really depends on each country practice: whether they enforce the law enough or not.

Are you sure that stealing software is inappropriate? Software is a non-rival good, so stealing it doesn't actually cost the producer of the software any money, unless you would have bought the software if stealing it wasn't an option. According to some theories of morality, the theft of non-rival goods is actually morally right quite a high proportion of the time, because it's able to benefit you without harming anyone else, resulting in an overall increase in global goodness or "utility".

A student license for Mathematica seems to cost $50 when I choose China as location. Personally I would consider just buying it without making a fuss, but of course I don't know how much money that is for you.

I think so many of these answers are totally irrelevant to this case, and quite obvious, they seems to explain why pirating software is bad or illegal.

@user4050 you are right... But! It seems it's not that obvious for some commenters who even think it's not bad or try to find a justification for this kind of action.

@eykanal thanks for unlocking the Q. I have written my answer so you can unlock it again if there are too much bad answers.

@goblin that's probably a conversation unfit for the comment section – not to mention off-topic :)

I'm sorry but this is the way Chinese businesses and educational institutions operate. I'd suggest pursuing an education elsewhere is this is not your thing.

@gnasher729, that's a good point, although I don't think it applies here.

Out of curiosity are you sure it is mathematica 11? They have significantly changed the process in which you register the latest version. I'm not for pirating but pirating old software is sometimes the only option.

@LiamWilliam Currently Mathematica 11 is the latest version, and our teacher has specified the version number to be 11 :(

Most times teachers specify a certain version "just to be sure" so they can blame you if you have issues and you are running a different version. Anyway, if you use the Wolfram Programming Cloud as suggested in my answer you will always get the latest features. Most likely, you won't need them.

It depends on your country's laws. Not all countries treat copyright violation strictly. Here are some of those countries. Though personal use is not the same as using it in the whole university, my point is that copyright violation laws can differ dramatically in various countries.

wolfram.com/mathematica/pricing/students-individuals.php -- the price for a 1 semester rental of a Mathematica student edition is 45$ US. This would come to 2%-12% of your annual Tuition, assuming you are paying what is typical in China for a post-secondary degree, for a year.