Fiona said:
Hm. Given Oxbridge's prioritisation of more abstract subjects over practical things like engineering, I always thought of Blake as having gone to one of the high-class redbricks (the equivalent, say of Imperial College London) and Avon to a newer university that was probably better academically but less well respected (say the equivalent of Hull). Actually, I wonder if they would even *have* an equivalent of Oxbridge in the Federation?
I'm sure they have anything and everything that one person could put down another for not having. Sometimes I think they even sumptuary laws so you can feel bad about that too. I'm pretty sure that Blake came from a much classier family than Avon, who IMO proves to us that they must have grammar schools in the Federation so they can have grammar school oiks.
However, I did write another story in which Blake and Avon were more or less in the same academic institution at the same time--Avon was Ph.D. candidate at the University of the Federation, Terran Campus while Blake was a third-year at the Federation Engineering Academy.
All the learning we see seems to be very practically-oriented-- while Ro's case does have a parallell with Indian nobility going to Oxbridge universities for the social cachet of it, it could be a local sort of cachet.
I figure that Ro went to the equivalent of Sandhurst, not Oxford or Cambridge.