I have 3 .edu domain names like college1.edu/~userid They all have a pr of 0 is it worth it for me to put my links there to my personal websites, will they be considered strong links? I understand they won't hurt at all but will it significantly help me?
edu links carry no more weight than any other type of link. edu's do tend to be trusted sites, but with no incoming links from the main edu site, they will be like any other PR0 link (little to no value).
mjewel said it all. .edu links all like all other, it's just that they tend to be trusted sites, that's why they're "famous".
Yep, due to the massive abuse (some guys bought masses of accounts from students, etc.) google stopped treating .edu links different from any others just for being .edu. Unfortunately many people still don't seem to know this fact, since you still see loads of orphan (not linked from the main site) .edu links being sold for ripoff prices.
the only reason that edu links are considered better is that they have the potential to be better. There are more high quality EDU sites out there, whose goal is not SEO or making money online, than with any other TLD except for .govs. The TLD means nothing at all in terms of benefits. Its just that, in general, a .edu will be higher authority than a .com because it is less spammy and tends to be a quality site. It still depends entirely on the page though and has nothing to do with the fact that it is a .edu.
Yep like everyone said above the EDU and Gov links have no more value than regular. The reason many people like to get these links because they do have a better chance of being an authority link but you can't just get random accounts signed up with no links from main page etc and think it is going to have any impact.