This morning, I came across this article from Quartz that talked about college students secretly mining cryptocurrencies in their dorms.
The student in focus was from MIT and he stated that he had gotten into mining by using old computers and graphics cards that were initially meant for gaming. The appeal to him was that he didn't have to pay for the electricity consumed since the college takes care of it. The only downside to this was the heat, which honestly isn't a problem come winter time.
The article points out that mining has become part of the culture at certain schools. At MIT, a whole floor of students have mining rigs. They benefit from the low cost and easy profitability from their situation and find it to be ethically reasonable because college is already so expensive.
This opportunity is pretty incredible and college students should definitely look into this because it is an easy way to learn more about cryptocurrencies and mining!