Catalina - Upgrade from Acrobat pro XI to Acrobat 2017 or other non-subscription based product

i have had the bad idea to upgrade my mac to catalina.

among other bad surprises i found out that my Adobe XI Pro no longer works.

i am not a fan of subscriptions so I am considering to upgrade to Acrobat Pro 2017.

clearly buying the full license at the hefty price of $499 is something that i could do without. However the "upgrade license option" at $199 seems to be available only to those upgrading from Acrobat Standard 2017,  Acrobat Standard DC or Acrobat Pro.

questions:

1. am I seeing this correctly ? (i.e. no reduced fee upgrade possible from Acrobat 11 to Acrobat pro 2017)

2. what are my options if i really do not want to go for a subscription based product?

3. is there stil a teacher / student program which would enable me to get a reasonably priced (non subscription) product? and which product would that be?

thx...

Giacomo