You go to a challenging university because you want to take advantage of their knowledge, to the extent that you're willing to pay them for it. An employer wants to take advantage of your knowledge, to the extent that they're willing to pay you for it. The situations aren't comparable.

I agree that three month contracts should be compensated at contractor wages rather than employee wages, unless the company is also paying for health benefits, some sort of portable retirement plan, etc. Otherwise you're giving up those items in return for zero commitment from the company. Not a good deal.

I would say it's comparable, at least in the way I treat a job.

If you work at an excellent company, you can learn much, much more than you do at an average job, and you'll likely make connections with better people. Working with excellent people at a job has many of the same benefits as studying with many excellent people at a university. It's one of the biggest reasons to go to an elite school, and one of the biggest reasons to work at a very selective job.

If it's a great company, I think it's worth giving up some of those things for the chance to work there. If you can show them that you're much better than average, they'd be stupid not to bring you on full time. It's mainly risky if you don't think you can demonstrate that.