1. Does it make sense to invest in an ASIC miner right now? Will I be able to make up the money in a reasonable amount of time and start turning a profit soon? I am mot looking to make a ton of money from this but more so to learn. However i do not want to lose money in the process. Excluding energy costs as they are free since I am at college.
Yes, it does make sense to invest in an ASIC miner right now,
but it doesn't make sense to invest in a Eruptor USB ASIC miner.
You might be able to make up the investment in some ASIC miners, but not the Eruptor USB, being the most expensive ASIC miner on the market.
2. Is the Eruptor USB a good choice for a miner and is it reliable or is there a better option that fits my budget?
No, it's the badest choice one could make,
it's more or less a guarantee for loss.
You pay (at least) 1.99BTC for the device, but you'll probably never make any more than 1.5BTC from mining with those devices,
ROI? never. Profit? dream of it.
3. For ASIC mining, are there any hardware requirements for the host computer, in terms of CPU/GPU or anything else?
As J35st3r said, usually you just need an USB Port (except for the Eruptor 10GH/s Blades, those use ethernet port), works fine even on a RaspberryPi, or router.