| there tons of great budget instruments out there now-a-days. Upton has some great starter plywood basses, Hybrids, and carved bass ranging from $1500-$6000 (I think).
I'm using a Strunal plywood of about $2500 with ebony fingerboard. Strunal also has Hybrids, and carved basses. I haven't tried their carved basses, but their hybrids are pretty interesting at $3500.
Shen from China has a bunch of basses from plywood to carved, cheapest carved being as low as 3000 or 4000$ which is pretty awesome. I think they have some nicer carved basses up to 10 000$ (I think that might be a little too high for a factory carved bass, but perhaps it's that good).
Wan-Bernadel from China seems like a great bass too, carved bass for only $5000! String Emporium deals with these instruments, made by hand by pro-luthiers in China! Steve LaSpina (a pro bassist) actually uses this bass and stands by it. They seem to be better value and construction than the other Chinese bass I mentioned, Shen.
There's also New Standard which seem to be good USA made basses.
The other options I can see you can do is probably visit your local luthier and/or string shops (or travel elsewhere if nothing insteresting in the area) to try MANY basses to see what you like, as well as to see what you don't like.
other than that, you can stick it out on the repaired bass. I guess this is the school's bass, so you can stick it out on this while you save your dollars. and who knows, maybe once the wood settles to the repair, the sound will be as good or better than originally. A bass is a musical instrument, and it wants to be played. Even the oldest instruments need to be played in order for their sound to mature and open-up (like the 200 year old instrument that's been in someone's closet for the past 50 years).
You mentioned you're not into the bow at this point. I would highly suggest getting serious with it as it will 'speed' up the process of 'opening-up' the bass. With pizz, there's is a decay of the note after it is plucked, with the bow this does not happen until the bow stops moving or leaves the string. This means that bow makes the wood vibrate continuously which is much more intense than pizz. The wood needs to vibrate and vibrate a lot in order to 'open-up' in terms of sound. You will experience this if you buy a NEW double bass. Not only good for the instrument, playing the bow is good for you as it will improve your intonation, right-arm weight control, etc.
hope this helps.
Mike | 
