Emma said (apropos of Avon):
I think he went to St Andrews through clearing.... and thus learnt
mistrust
and grudges (as an outsider in a strange community), but also how to
appear
quite posh when he needed. Also the inferiority complex because of the attitude to the clearing contingent. Maybe not though...
What is "clearing"? We don't have that in the U.S. unless we call it something else.
We know that there are Ph.ederated Ph.D.s so to speak (Dr. Plaxton, Dr. Kendall of the Ortega, Dr.Bellfriar in Killer, unless he's a medical doctor like Kayn and Renor). However there is no canonical reference to Avon being among their number. He seems to me (like Hamlet) to be someone who clearly spent a LOT of time in graduate school. If he got kicked out for being caught nicking the cricket club money, they wouldn't have let him anywhere near the banking system. So: *did he get fed up before taking his doctorate and went out to earn some money * he has an MBA instead *in the minds of the screenwriters, action heroes don't have Ph.D.s?
BTW there's an Executrix story in which the University of Kentib wants to show its rebel sympathies by awarding Blake an honorary doctorate--they have some difficulty deciding what in (Avon suggests Architecture, in reverse) but settle on PPE.
-(Y)