Thoughts on the best current AE version for college motion and VFX classes?

Hey there, 
Just thought I'd see if anyone had any input on which version of AE I should require for my motion and VFX classes heading into the new school year in a couple weeks. I have traditionally required students to use the previous version but it's always a little bit of a battle with some students accidentally letting their CC app auto-update and just students being students and not always responding.

As far as hardware, at school we have M1 Mac Studios but most of the classes are online these days so students tend to have either basic gaming-oriented Windows machines or MacBook Pros, and anything in between. There's no real way of me knowing, I distribute the minimum requirements and hope for the best. It's actually surprising how few issues I run into with students and their hardware.

And for how we use AE, we get into maybe an intermediate level of animation and compositing with tons of Cinema 4D integration via Cineware and AEC files. Our main 3rd party effects are Particular and some RG odds and ends like Real Lens Flares and Magic Bullet Looks. 

Anyway, on my personal projects, I've had issues with AE 25.3.2 not being able to open many of my projects and ultimately had to roll back to 25.2.2 to get some stability back. I've also had issues with Particular on 25.3.2 and all kinds of weird errors and crashes while making pretty basic particle systems.

So basically, considering the variety of hardware used and nature of what we're teaching, should I probably sit back and stick with 25.2.2 until more kinks get ironed out on 25.3.2? We can certainly up-or-downgrade durung the semester, it's just far from ideal. 

Thanks for any input from the community!