Well the difference between the Academic edition and the Professional edition is that anything made with the academic edition can't be sold. Other that that you've got what the professionals use in terms of the IDE. Some go a step further and get the VS TFS (Team Foundation Suite) but that stuff is the professional edition plus some server side stuff like a source code control, share point server, etc all built together. You don't actually run the TFS on your local machine.

Anyways there is no VS 2009, also I do recomend getting the beta (it's free) of VS 2010 and at least start playing with it, if you can use it for classes (get the real thing when it's released) and if you need VS 2008 for classes, you can always get the Standard or Pro edition then (the express edition might be all you need, which is free)