I need to run a program on a linux machine, and the only one I have access to is my university's server with (for some reason) outdated versions of autoconf and automake. My program needs more recent versions. I have the most recent versions of each on the server in my home directory, but can't install them in /usr/local/bin since I'm not a root user. So I guess I have two questions:

1. How to get autoconf/automake to *install* somewhere in my home directory? Is this possible?
2. How to get a program to access these newer versions, instead of automatically calling the outdated ones?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.