Going to college, you’ve got a distinct advantage when buying software. Adobe have incredible deals for full time students with verified picture ID who go through their bookstore, with Adobe master suite at huge discounts. Ask your bookstore. Of course the learning curve for all adobe software is really difficult, and you can expect to spend thousands of hours learning photoshop, premier pro, flash, dreamweaver, and others. But once you learn those professional programs, you are empowered to do much more than with entry level programs. The technology behind layers is so powerful, that once you learn it you will never want to go back. If you are doing multimedia you will need pro level software of some type.
Others may suggest the Apple products, which are also very good and equally expensive, with possibly an easier learning curve. I don’t have any experience with those.
Regarding your question about cameras, you will want a new one in a few years, regardless of what you buy. I’m using a Canon Vixia HF10, which has now been replaced by newer models, but it works good so I don’t care. The disappointing thing about Adobe is that they don’t offer free upgrades of their software for new cameras, so when you buy a new camera you need to buy their upgraded editions, which could be more expensive than the camera (!). And Adobe have recently announced that they don’t allow upgrading unless your upgrade sequence follows the exact sequence of their new releases, meaning that you need to buy each upgrade every year. That sucks.
A quality HD camera that lasts for years is to your advantage. I also have several Canon SLR cameras, but those don’t offer autofocus when shooting video, and so for automotive videos they are a lot more effort. SLR video is cool, more effort, and possibly more versatile for creative work. But the narrow DOF seen with quality glass can be limiting if you only have time for a couple of takes. If you are using an SLR to shoot video, your attention will be mostly to the camera. But for automotive work, I’m mostly focused on the vehicle, so I don’t want to fiddle with the camera very much. For typical youtube videos, an SLR technique seems like too much effort to me.