> It's a way for them to get the MIPS architecture out in the open.
Most computer architecture courses of the last 25 years have already been based on MIPS (or any MIPS-like or -light adapted version for the course). That's because the MIPS ISA is simple, regular and elegant, and the original MIPS is a pipeline simple enough to be taught easily and nevertheless able to present most important problems and solutions that a CPU and a pipelined CPU may encounter.
Most computer architecture courses of the last 25 years have already been based on MIPS (or any MIPS-like or -light adapted version for the course). That's because the MIPS ISA is simple, regular and elegant, and the original MIPS is a pipeline simple enough to be taught easily and nevertheless able to present most important problems and solutions that a CPU and a pipelined CPU may encounter.