Does Mac not make MS Access

There is no Access for Mac. Microsoft makes Access (and Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook) and did not make a version of Access for Mac.

Your only choice is to run Windows somehow. (There's no version of Access for Linux either.) You can install Windows on a Mac using Boot Camp or a virtual machine. (e.g.: Parallels or Fusion or Virtualbox.) Or you can use a Windows PC. But regardless of how you run Windows, getting a Mac to run Access will definitely mean an extra expense (Windows,) an inconvinience (rebooting to Boot Camp,) or remove the inconvinience and use Windows in Parallels/Fusion/Virtualbox. (Slower than Boot Camp, but might be acceptable for your classwork. And except for Virtualbox, Parallels/Fusion is not free, but arguably better than Virtualbox.)

Bottom line: if you don't want the extra expense, your only choice is a Windows PC, not a Mac.

There is still a cost associated with a Windows PC...it's not a Mac, and that's a high price to pay.

iWork does not have a database module. Apple does make Bento and formerly Filemaker. And there's OpenOffice, which has a database module called Base. Why they may be able to open the MDF to access the raw data, none of them will be able to convert the forms, querys & reports in the MDF. The stuff provided by your degree program will almost certainly have forms and reports. Therefore, any other database app will be useless for you and your degree program.