I agree that the prices on the glass are better than Nikon, but my students have mostly had problems with the AE1's and AE1 Program's rather strange manual metering system. With the AE1, you have to set you shutter speed and read inside the camera what aperture to set your lens at. You then need to pull your eye away from the camera and set the lens to the correct aperture.
The Nikon FE2 FM2, and F3 have a more traditional match needle or LED system and also show you the aperture in the viewfinder, which can speed things up a great deal. (Actually, for shooting manual, I prefer the FE2 for its needle metering over both the FM2 and F3) I have never had a student who felt comfortable with using the AE1 in manual and all of them so far have just given up and used one of the auto settings. I think that the F1 would be awesome, but they are more than the AE1 cameras by quite a bit.