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This was my suggestion, but my son tells me that they say some of the software required doesn’t run that well on Windows native.

That's a Microsoft bigoted IT department idiot at the college making that claim. You boot a Mac into Windows and the hardware IS a Windows computer. Especially for anything that is going to be required at a business specialized college. I've run into this before.

Many reviewers of hardware for Microsoft Windows specific magazines have reported that the very best notebook hardware to run Windows are Macs.

I would NOT put it past these Windows bigots in the college IT department to have created proprietary college software that checks to make sure what kind of hardware their college software is running on and shut down functions if it isn't what they want to encounter. I've seen that before.

I ran across one bigoted piece of software on a website that would only operate its scripts if you were specifically running Microsoft Internet Explorer on an Windows Based computer with an Intel processor. It would not even run if you were on a Windows computer that used an AMD processor. It checked, and if it didn't find what the software developer considered a "proper computer", it popped up an alert telling the user to buy a real Intel computer using a real browser, with a real operating system: now that's a platform snob! The really strange thing was this was a platform to BUY products from an online retailer! I made a direct phone call to the CEO of the company and asked him if he was in the business of selling HIS products or selling Microsoft's and Intel's products? He wanted to know what I was talking about... and I explained his IT department was insulting and chasing away a very high percentage of his potential customers. He was shocked. He had no clue what was going on in his own business.

If you do have to cow-tow to their IT requirements, don't skimp on a Windows laptop by buying a bottom of the barrel el-cheapo. You'll regret it. Buy one that is just as expensive as a Mac laptop and you should be OK. Any of the namellie brand makers among Dell, Lenovo, HP, Sony (a preference), Acer, etc. in that price range, would most likely do what your son will require and last the full four years.

Have a Windows expert strip out all of the crapware (trialware, etc.) they all come with and get it down to only what he needs to run; i.e. make it a mean, lean machine.