Bought .EDU Page Redirects

I saw something very interesting last night. While scrolling through the SERPS, I started to notice an unusually high number of .edu domains showing up - for a commercial product name keyword. Upon closer inspection, I noted that, unbecoming of such an esteemed institution, both title and description of each listing had been optimized for said keyword.
Curious as to what an .edu would have to say about said product, I clicked on the link, only to land on a completely different domain.

It would seem someone is not only buying .edu links, but actually buying individual .edu pages, and then creating a cross domain redirect, presumably to not only get the .edu link benefit, but the inherent benefit of a 301 from a .edu.

Anyone have experience with this, and their findings?

And before anyone gets on their high horse, understand that my stance on the the whole "black hat VS white hat" issue is simple - all efforts to perform search engine optimization constitutes a contravention of search engine terms of service, so regardless of how you want to look at it, if you've built a link, you are a "black hat". So rather than argue semantics, I'll take an "Art of War" stance, and gain an understanding of my "foes" and their attack strategies.