The 2D game kit is definitely not perfect, but it is meant to show you the very basics of using unity, which you will need for later assignments, and help those that have zero experience with a game engine.
As for the unity issues, I'm sorry about that. I would find it weird that having a newer version would cause such issues (the required version is only to match the unity on school computers, if you have your own, it doesn't matter too much which one you are using). But since it's unity, I wouldn't be surprised either if installing the other version would fix the issue.