I'm working on a web-based class project for which I need a database. I'd like to stick to something that is easily available and a somewhat-low learning curve.

The one caveat is that this will not be a throw-away application. It will live on after the class.

Given, is there any reason that I should not go with Access which is available on all the PCs accross my campus. Or Should I use a REAL database, like MYSQL? It's also possible that Oracle might be available as well.

If university/school has it's standard database, it may be best to stick with that...

It also depends partly on the web-server and script language you're going to use. If it's apache + PHP or Python, and you a choice to install it, I'd go for MySQL.

I would tend to recommend MySQL.

1) It's free
2) I find Access lacking in some really good features (MySQL may lack others)
3) I think MySQL is more likely to be used in industry.

I find that Microsoft tends to turn its nose up at industry standards and so learning on an MS product can result in some very sloppy programming that may not work in other applications. Take, for example, ASP. Statements there are "newline separated" rather than ";" separated. Try that in just about every other programming language and you're in for a massive headache.

Furthermore, learning everything via a GUI means you don't understand what's actually going on. Calculators are banned in grade school for the same reason.

Oracle is a nice database, but can be quite costly.

To re-iterate then, I would go with MySQL. They have fairly good documentation on their website, and there are plenty of forums available to assist you.

First: what server will you use?

Is this microsoft server? Both would work fine.
Is this Linux server? -- don't waste your time with access, get MySQL.

Now, I might be biased, but I prefer MySQL. I have worked with both, and if nothing else, I didn't like the ODBC functionality for making DBs live on a server.

Moreover, it's been a couple years since I ran a MS server with access DB via ODBC, and it was not stable at the time! -- I would have to commonly reload the ODBC link; for some reason, the DB would go offline periodically. I trust this has since been fixed, but...

mySql is the best for class projects.. easily available..
and learning curve.. hmm actually its' just same as
any other db coz.. its' just sql any where

It depends how complicated things you'll do with the database. If you need strong support of stored procedures and such things, use PostgreSQL. But it doesn't looks this way (you thing about Access), so MySQL should be enough.