You shouldn’t read the Inferno without reading the Purgatorio, at least.  Should English-speaking students be required to read the entire Divine Comedy as do their Italian counterparts?  No, if they have to read an entire epic, it should be Paradise Lost instead, although the current-day focus on Shakespeare is fine.

Dante is important to Western culture broadly, but he’s far more important to Italy in particular.  From what I can tell, Dante is far more important to the modern Italian language than Shakespeare is to modern English.  Milton himself wrote in English of course, and while admittedly the language of Paradise Lost is more difficult in general than Shakespeare, it’s not impenetrable to a bright student, nor does it require an antiquarian bent to appreciate as does Spenser.  I can’t read Italian, but translations of Dante don’t have the same touch as Milton’s English.

Perhaps in exchange for the euphony of its verse, Paradise Lost does lack the symbolic density of The Divine Comedy, with its numerologically significant lines and cantos, and Dante’s astronomical/astrological bent.  These latter don’t, I think, do much more for the average student than provide some antidote against allegations of medieval stupidity, and they’re outright incomprehensible for the most part without a tidy amount of secondary literature (they certainly were for me).  Milton by comparison indulges in Homeric action and battle scenes which can, at least, be more coherently abridged than the usual  two-thirds to three-quarters excised from the Comedy.

Milton’s portrayal of celestial beings, including God Himself, is also considerably more anthropomorphic than Dante’s.  Satan as a negation in Inferno and God as unknowable perfection in Paradiso might be more theologically sound than Milton’s depictions of the same, but they are frankly a lot less fun.  The big dumb loser crushed by the weight of the universe’s sins is a first rate image, don’t get me wrong, but he can’t compete with his own prime:

If thou beest he; But O how fall’n! how chang’d
From him, who in the happy Realms of Light
Cloth’d with transcendent brightness didst out-shine
Myriads though bright: If he Whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in the Glorious Enterprize,
Joynd with me once, now misery hath joynd
In equal ruin: into what Pit thou seest
From what highth fall’n, so much the stronger prov’d
He with his Thunder: and till then who knew
The force of those dire Arms? yet not for those,
Nor what the Potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
Though chang’d in outward lustre; that fixt mind
And high disdain, from sence of injur’d merit,
That with the mightiest rais’d me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of Spirits arm’d
That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power oppos’d
In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav’n,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That Glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deifie his power,
Who from the terrour of this Arm so late
Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods
And this Empyreal substance cannot fail,
Since through experience of this great event
In Arms not worse, in foresight much advanc’t,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal Warr
Irreconcileable, to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in th’ excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav’n.

I have always preferred this over “to reign is worth ambition…” 

The entire epic might be a bit much for students who struggle through Macbeth.  But if you feel peeved by “bardolatry” or think you’re spending “too much time” on Shakespeare, give Milton a try before tackling a roughly-Dante-shaped homunculus in the form of excerpted translations of the Comedy.