Search for cube 3 hack and you'll find some of the stuff available to enable generic filament as well as replacing some of the more serious failings like the fragile bowden tube. It's an amazingly good printer if those things are corrected. I had the unfortunate luck to get a good working one and produced some top-quality prints, but then age of the filament set in, the bowden tubes got punctured, etc. It's too much work for my lazy butt to go into the hacks and make it work well again.

Certainly Illustrator and Inkscape are 2D applications, but one can create useful 3D printed models that are nothing more than extrusions of a 2D shape. Most of the 3D applications I've suggested will accept some form of vector image, SVG, DXF, AI, and stretch it vertically to create a model. The sketch based applications such as Fusion 360 and OnShape will do that with ease, while TinkerCAD will as well, but I've not experienced that program sufficiently to advise. Consider that an artistic student can create something complex and attractive in Illustrator/Inkscape, import it to the application, place it on a plane and extrude it. Repeat with other shapes, other planes and one is limited only by one's imagination. Mine is zero.

I use an extension to Inkscape called Inkscape to OpenSCAD converter, which takes an SVG within Inkscape and creates an OpenSCAD file with the thickness specified in the converter. It's a clunky bit of software, but reasonably stable and works well. Once opened in OpenSCAD, additional actions can be taken to accomplish the desired model.

If you had not mentioned in your post the Adobe stuff, I would have not considered to add it to the dissertation, but then something valuable would have been missed.

If you have younger students, there is also a mash-up of OpenSCAD and Scratch coding language, a GUI bundle called BlockSCAD which makes creating models as easy as drag and drop. It's probably good for the 6-10 year old set as the older crowd would do better with the previously mentioned applications.

I am a member of a local makerspace which is hosted by the local library. If you have a local makerspace in your area, you may have some resources there as well. Most of us maker types (tinkerers from the old times) are more than happy to assist others.