Educational Institutions

To Be Expanded - While the lore here is subject to expansion, it is still canon.

Under Construction - This page is under construction and subject to change at any time

Many of the largest higher education organizations in the galaxy are run either wholly by, or with the backing of one or more Trans-Stellar Corporations, with a focus on educating future employees to enter immediately into employment contracts, and/or providing those companies with a permanent base of semi-independent research. Publically owned institutions are also common, and SolGov attempts to maintain an exhaustive list of the myriad of qualifications and degrees offered by disparate polities and their relative "values", though every employer tends to have their own biases towards particular awarding agencies. As has been the case throughout history, the quality, focus, and ethics of educational institutions vary immensely.

This page is intended to illustrate a representative selection of institutions, and some of the galaxy's most prestigious alma mater, and is by no means an exhaustive list.

Vir

New Rejkjavik Technicial Institute

Sif's premiere technical institute.

Sol

"Old World" Universities

Many of the centuries-old institutions of Earth survive to this day. Though some have unified under umbrella organizations, many of these retain their original campus names - or derivatives - for the purposes of historical prestige and its associated inflated tuition costs, even when there is no genuine continuity in their operations. Many of these universities offer what are still considered the top humanities programs in human space.

At peak of ease of travel in the 2550s a number of top Earth universities even operated out-of-system campuses on some of humanity's most populous worlds, in addition to the fairly standard practice of specialist departmental locations throughout the Sol system.

Mojave University

Founded in 2408 by the California government and operated as a public entity, Mojave University is one of Earth's largest vocational colleges. The college was created as part of a local effort to provide (relatively) low cost education to the people on Earth following a centuries-long trend of lower income residents of the planet being priced out of higher education. In international terms the college is still prohibitively expensive to most, compounded by inflated fees levied on off-world students.

Tharsis University

Located on Mars, Tharsis is one of the earliest academic institutions to be established outside of Earth. The university is renowned for its electronic and mechatronic engineering departments, and sees sizable research grants from Xion Manufacturing and Ward-Takahashi, who operate many of their own facilities in the city and employee many fresh graduates.

Mariner University

Headquartered in Persephone, Venus and with campuses on Titan. Mariner University is a research university renowned for its natural science programs, particularly Botany, Climatology and Atmospherics, which are considered some of the very best available in Sol.

Elysium University & Tycho Fleet Academy

The Tycho Fleet Academy was among the first things built by the nascent SolGov, envisioned as an "international school" that would insulate the officers of the new government from influence by any Earth nation. Due to the prominent role of the Fleet in enforcing the pro-Icarus policies of early SolGov, and in policing and even administrating hostile independent colonies, Tycho Fleet Academy quickly ballooned in importance, size, and cost. As Sol de-militarized following the peace of the mid-22nd century, Elysium University was founded as a sister school to the Fleet Academy, intending to train up civilian colonial administrators, bureaucrats, and other government officials to the same standards of quality and loyalty.

While somewhat reduced in prominence in the modern day, most Fleet officers are still trained at Tycho, with officers from schools in the colonies considered "mustangs" of inferior prestige. Meanwhile, Elysium University has acquired a reputation for excellence in the social sciences and in art. An 'intellectual exchange program' with several prominent Qerr'balak'i academies in the 2510's saw an influx in Skrellian professors and students which has put Elysium on the cutting-edge of human memetic research. Human graduates of Elysium have historically been heavily courted by the Icarus Front, with Elysium graduate Makenzie West currently General Secretary of the party. Graduates of more liberal disposition often find work at Oculum Broadcast.

Oberon Institute of Artificial Intelligence

Based in, and taking up much of, the relatively remote Neptunian moon of Oberon, OIAI specializes, unsurprisingly, in the study of artificial intelligence and drone technology. Its presence in the Icarus heartlands of Sol has been an issue of contention for centuries, exacerbated by rumored roots in the Shoulders of Giants, a late 21st century technocratic political movement. Ironically, OIAI has historically funneled a large number of its graduates into the EIO, where they use their extensive training in AI design to analyze and dissect potentially emergent drones. While notionally beholden to the public, it has also partnered with TSCs, especially NanoTrasen, Ward-Takahashi, and Morpheus Cyberkinetics to acquire funding and technical support for ambitious experiments in digital minds.

New Seoul

New Seoul Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

This lore was submitted by wonderbreadofrorikstead

The New Seoul Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (NSAIST) is a medical research university located on New Seoul. It is a private university funded by tuition and research grants, as well as generous donations from the wealthy elite across the Five Arrows.

NSAIST consists of multiple colleges and numerous degree fields, ranging from the technical certification level all the way to PhD and continuing education. Notable programs include genetics, virology, xenobiology, health science, and biomechanical engineering. Lower end certification programs include topics like phlebotomy, first-aid, anaesthesiology, and prosthetic repair.

Unusually, most classes are offered in both Galactic and Skrellian Common due to the large population of Skrell in Five Arrows territory. Prior to the Skathari Incursion the university offered a large number of remote and correspondence classes for many of its programs, but due to the increasingly expensive and delayed nature of data transmission over interstellar distances, most are now only realistically available to those located within the Sagittarius Heights region.

The university maintains a healthy working relationship with biomedical TSC's, most notably Kaleidoscope Cosmetics, who have pushed for the expansion of the College of Genetics in recent years in return for first pick in recruiting newly minted promising PhD students. Zeng-Hu Pharmaceuticals, Vey-Medical, and Morpheus Cyberkinetics are all associated with the university to a lesser extent, promising research grant funding in exchange for patent rights from their pet researchers.

Alpha Centauri

Angelic College at Makon

The somewhat cloyingly named Angelic College at Heaven is a small, prestigious university found in Heaven colony around Alpha Centauri. Its signature programs include history, memetics, and bioscience, but it is perhaps most famous for its extensive extracelestial survey program, closely associated with its astrophysics, xenobiology, and tachyon science departments. Researchers from the Angelic College were first-in to many of the scientific outposts that would give rise to the states of the Precursor's Crypt, and it continued to send researchers afield until the Skathari Incursion put a temporary stop to the program. Proposals for a new outpost studying the relationship between skathari and tachyon flux in Incursion-ravaged Nyx are fiercely debated within the academy itself as well as Heaven's government more broadly.

Tau Ceti

Ceti Technical Institute

CTI is the leading applied sciences institute on Binma. Its blue supernova emblem is a common sight on merchandise items sold throughout the galaxy, regardless of the owners' actual alma mater.

Sidhe

Daoine Institute

The Heights' largest university prior to the Skathari Incursion, Daoine was a massive mixed human-Skrellian style academy which dominated the politics and government of the Sidhe system for over a century. Originally founded as a xenoarcheological institute, branch campuses studying material science and tachyon physics came to dominate public perception of the university, receiving enormous research grants from NanoTrasen, Hephaestus Industries, and Wulf Aeronautics. After the Incursion, many of Daoine's branch campuses were overrun by skathari, taken over by Ue-Katish pirates, or simply ceased to be accessible after the failure of its state-of-the-art gateway network, and almost all of its control over system politics was lost. Attempts to rebuild its prestige and corporate endowment have proved difficult, though it continues to operate many of the same programs in a reduced capacity.