My son got a second job as the guy taking care of, helping with setups, etc at the NAU (Yuma Campus) machine shop. Primarily they have a couple HAAS Mini Mill 2 VMCs, and a TL1 lathe... along with some other equipment. He was over helping me install some equipment in my shop the other day. (He's skinny enough to get behind some stuff without moving it) We got to geeking about things. One thing I suggested to him a while back is to see if he could get the university to pay the for the cost of him taking the HAAS certification courses on those machines. He asked and they agreed. They even went the extra expense of bringing out somebody from HAAS to complete the certifications. Part of the courses are on-line, but you have to do the final certifications in person. Most people travel to their HQ for that. The university is bringing somebody out from HAAS.
One of the other things we talked about was tooling. The university has a deal with HAAS where they have to use all HAAS tooling. Sounds at first like they got educator prices on machines, and then got stuck, but no. The price of just about everything I looked up was really good. New CT40 tool holders for less than the price of used ones on eBay. A Haimer 3D taster for a little more than 25% less than the CHEAPEST other source I have found. I might actually buy one at that price... with a whole box of spare probes of course. LOL. I didn't look at everything obviously, but the price for the HAAS tooling we looked at is very reasonable. That is not some special educator price either. That's the price you or I would pay.
They asked Rob (my son) to give them a list of tooling he wanted for the machines. They baulked when it was as much as another machine. LOL.
His first job is as a licensed pharmacy technician. Okay maybe that's the 2nd job and the NAU machine shop is the third. He is also a full time engineering student. He already has several AA degrees and is working on his BA. That's his primary job.