Quote - You don't use a hammer to turn a screw. 

And, even more to the point, if you're a professional, you don't use a hammer at all; you use a nail gun.

People, for the most part, do things that benefit themselves. That's not a condemnation of the human condition, it's just a generalization that's a useful tool in analyzing behavior.

So, some art school board is deciding what degrees to offer. Will they offer a degree in Poser? The answer is predicated on another question: will they get enough student's wanting the degree to make enough money to justify hiring the teachers, paying the janitors, and keeping the lights on?

So, now we need to ask, why would a student want to get a degree in Poser? Most of a schools money comes from students who want to use their degree to get a job. There will be a few who want to learn Poser because they love it, sure, but it's the job seekers that will give the school enough money to offer a degree.

So, now we need to ask, where would you get a job using Poser? I think we covered the gam industry pretty well, so let's look at special effects houses. I can tell you from the experience of talking to people in this industry that they are always running behind and have too much to do. They'll use anything they can get their hands on that will keep their heads above water. The software they use has to have the features they need, and the performance.

So, now we need to ask, what do these places need? They need models created, mapped, and textured. Poser doesn't help there. They need the models rigged, which we can do in Poser. For characters and animals, they need muscle deformers and skin objects (not really a strong suit of Poser, but you can fake it; slowly though). They need a lot of texturing options that are time consuming to create in Poser. Then they need to animate everything. Again, Poser can do this. But it's slower to do it than some other tools. Finally, you need to create 3D renders in layers, which is not an option in Poser, so you've got to move your animation to another software product, fix the rigging and the animation, and render it there, so you can do your compositing.

In the end, Poser doesn't have the speed or features to be used in creating final product for most film or television production. It's a great pre-vis tool, absolutely, but pre-vis isn't a big enough niche to create enough jobs to lure the prospective students in for a degree program that won't generate enough money.

There is no conspiracy. There's only so much money and time that people have to spend, and enough of them have chosen to use Maya, 3DS, Lightwave, C4D, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that Poser doesn't fit in that particular pipe.

Now, that said, realize that school degrees really don't mean much, once you're on this side of the educational system (I'm 47, been out of school longer than I was in it). When I hire somebody, I honestly don't care where he went to school or how he did, unless that's all I've got to go on. What I really care about is whether the person can do the job, will be responsible, and so on. What's important is that you love what you do, and you have fun with it. If Poser is that thing for you, then ride off into the sunset knowing that you're doing what you love.

And if you run into somebody who slams Poser, ask him if he's gotten a lot of work lately. Real professionals are too busy to trash anything.