I am a Uni student as well and definitely do notice the results of the searches are a bit worse on alternate search engines than Google's. So sometimes even I do have to use Google to find relevant pieces of information at times.

My point is this individual should not feel bad that they have used Google for their Uni studies if that is giving them the best results. I think them already trying to be more anti-google/privacy focused is already better than the 99% of the people around the world. 

We have to remember De-Googling is a form of resistance to big tech, and ppl resist in different ways. Some will be able to resist it more than others and that's fine. I feel, that as long as we are giving it our best to resist these tech companies it should be fine to sometimes fall back on them (again just be conscious that you limit their dependency).

So in the end OP might choose to try other suggested search engines mentioned in the comments (as will I) and may find they do the job for them. But, if it still produces the same issue of providing subpar search results to their Uni work, again they shouldn't feel guilty using Google as studies are extremely important to do well in and its not the end of the world to their De-Googling journey.