EDU Domains and websites with obvious spam

[AdultMySpace]

I found this forum on an EDU domain hxxp:://xxx.virginia.edu/residencelif...orum/index.php (apologies, cant post links yet as I am still new) Now you can see it seems to be a forum that was put up and is being spammed to hell and back with no moderation. My question is, are links from a site like this going to be beneficial? Besides the fact that one day we may see it come down and you lose those links, surely even though its an .edu site this sort of forum wont do much for rankings? Curious to hear your thoughts, as its PR is sitting at 6 or 7 I think. Im not quite sure if the search engines have a way to measure how much Spam there is on a particular site and if you are penalised for it? Also a big thank you to everyone for your help so far. Im already ranking on Googles front page for 3 different search terms, and its all down to this forum

[brentbraceros]

I'm new here also, i have seen .edu sites also with forums installed and gets abused by spammers then later on they just shut it down. i think putting on links with these type forum is just a waste of time.

[Underground SEO]

certainly seems like a waste of time to me as most of the edu forums do, as the above poster stated, get wiped pretty quickly, concentrate your linking efforts on links that will stand the test of time.

[pandorasbox]

I think it is a waste of time unless you are on page 1-2 of your keyword, then you use it for the boost and then do something to replace its power, when it is wiped your position changed and no longer care about the link. Even leaches have there purposes in life.

[DPM70]

Don't bother. OR - maybe do bother? Test it yourself.