Yeah a shell account is a standard term for getting a terminal access in a shared system going all the way back to mainframes.

Most universities at least in the US had a thing called a Sunsite that came with shell access sometimes.

Yeah they do

If you are planning on running an open shell account server. I would look up joining the tildeverse as a member server.

That’s the one thing idiocracy got wrong it wouldn’t be Costco it would be Rent-A-Center