Use MPM ITK.
Solves security, memory and speed problems.
Tested in production, very good alternative for environments when
users are not very savvy and not require custom php.ini
I use ITK with great results, but it needs to be configured for every virtual host individually.
I believe the original poster is looking for a solution that will work with ~userdirs.
I should add that I do not know of any universities that allow students to run arbitrary code on the primary servers.
At the University of Maryland, you can not run ANY code on the
users server (they used to allow SSI, but that is gone now too) and many departments require an internal audit of your application before they will let it run on their servers.
