I am running a site on a .edu server which already has a PR of 4 and that is why I want to upload the site on their server rather my own. I feel like Google trusts the .edu sites more than .com
However, since I am limited on bandwidth on the .edu account (the university has limited BW), I was thinking of uploading images on my own .com server and linking it from the .edu site.
Would the .edu site show up on the Google image search or would the site that I am linking to show up instead or neither and google would penalize for hot linking (considering that Google doesn’t know I own both)?

Also since it would be difficult for users to type www.school.edu/groups/example/ I bought a domain (Example.com). Would you recommend forwarding the Example.com index page to www.school.edu/groups/example/ and uploading images on Example.com/Folders/images/ or would you recommend redirecting the domain directly to www.school.edu/groups/example/ and linking to the images using another hosting account that I currently own?

Thanks in advance...