What kind of video conference software do academics use?

I use Skype and Google Hangouts all the time. No stigma attached. Go for whatever is convenient for everyone.

As somebody who does a lot of remote collaboration, I find that there is a distinct tradeoff between link quality and software.

• Google Hangouts is the worst for audio and video quality, but is more resilient to bad connections. It will usually get something through.
• Skype is great when there's a decent connection, but degrades badly when there is not.
• Most paid software (e.g., WebEx, GoToMeeting) has less choppy video than Skype, but the audio is unreliable: some days it's great, some days it's crap. The audio problems seem to have to do with the phone part of the connection, not the network.
• Given good bandwidth, BlueJeans gives the best video and audio of any I've encountered, but will shamelessly dominate your machine's network connection and processors.

Personal anecdote: I am not allowed to install Skype on my corporate machine, for security reasons. (I'm unclear whether the issues our IT people fear are that people might listen in on our secretsecretsecret Skype calls, or whether they fear Skype might be a vector for malicious software.) So don't be surprised if someone cannot do Skype.

My company has a (likely expensive) PGI subscription. This runs in browsers, so we have less security concerns. It allows the host a lot of options and will work for larger videoconferences (multiple hundreds of participants).

I realize that this is not academic use per se, so feel free to flame me ;-)