For most businesses, it comes down to what is needed for the work at hand vs cost. *Smart* businesses plan for anticipated future work. Of critical importance is reliability; not just MTBF but, if the equipment *does* fail, what level of support does the vendor provide. Often, leasing is a better option, especially if it is a one time requirement for a particular piece of equipment. And when used in a business environment, the results of whatever piece of equipment you are using is what you are using to guarantee the performance of the product or service you are offering. In other words, in an business environment the intangibles often count - and rightly so - for a large part of the choice of equipment. The big name manufacturers with a robust, and preferably local, local support network are the ones that give the business owners the warm 'n fuzzies. At work, we have a couple of perfectly good Anritsu 68337C at work but we just bought 3 Keysight 50 GHz E5257D's because the Anritsu's have a *long* repair turn around, whereas the local Keysight rep will have us a loaner within a couple of hours if needed. For scopes, we use middle-low end Tek MSO's for most things, with a 55 GHz one when it gets serious. A R&S FSVR40 spec-an. A lot of money, but required for the current and foreseeable work. The Tek has almost the same level of customer care if something goes wrong and the R&S, well, it's top end R&S and just *doesn't have* issues. Also, a loaded Fluke 5520A for sanity checks on everything. After all, in business as often in life, you are remembered for the one thing you did wrong, not the 1000 you got right.
For a university environment, I would think Fluke, HP and Tek for scopes. A university department budget *never* has enough funds, at least to the one in charge of it so I would think that a huge emphasis would be put on long-term accuracy and durability
Hal