Interesting. I am in a small niche, where a lot of student society websites ending in .edu have links to their sponsors, and they don't nofollow them.

Typically they don't know what nofollow is, and their sites are run by people who don't really know much about websites.

I can't educate the entire sector. Is it better to steer clear of link building with this broad swath of sites? Most of the other sites in my niche have built links through these sites.

There is a shortage of followed links in my niche as most content creators in my narrow field are commercial and don't link to competitors.