> "Academics (in the UK) is there any effort towards making free-libre software available through collaboration of different institutes?"
I don't work in that field, so I can't answer your question directly, but I can pass on that EAGLE, which is probably KiCad's closest competitor, is available for free for academic institutions:
I don't work in that field, so I can't answer your question directly, but I can pass on that EAGLE, which is probably KiCad's closest competitor, is available for free for academic institutions:
https://cadsoft.io/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EAGLE_(program)