SPSS/STATA

I don't know any empirical economist who uses SPSS (though I am sure some exist) so I guess this is more for the wider readership. Most psychology and business postgraduate students that I know work with SPSS and also a relatively big chunk of people in medicine and related fields. Ignoring for a moment the fact that many fields and subfields require more specialist software, what do people think on this one? If an MPH student tells me that they are going to do an empirical thesis using, for example, micro-health data and that they are happy enough with SPSS should I roll along or start shouting? In general, does this matter for day-to-day empirical research? In my case, its more or less a no-brainer in that I do not have any empirical collaborator who uses anything other than STATA for their main work so collaboration would be difficult if I started sending them SPSS syntax files. Let me phrase a relatively simple questions - If I was teaching the methods course in public health or psychology which package should I use?