Some people will point out the obvious flaws in this plan, but I'm sure some geniuses out there will give your friend money, they always do.
People seem to have become a tad more reasonable when it comes to spend their money on crazy IPOs. But in this case, how big is that cluster that he can mine altoins worth 1-3 BTC per day? Also: Yeah, he is effectively stealing from the university and thus from the tax payers or tuition fees...