The Academies are old and storied institutions. In the days of the old capital there was only one - now there are fourteen - two major, and twelve minor.
The minor academies are small affairs, mostly aligned with powerful and wealthy merchant and military houses. They are often staffed by three or four well known tutors (and they compete for famous names), and have their campuses in single buildings. They exist to teach the science and practice of pattern languages to heirs and noble scions with the aptitude and dedication required - they will supplement their income by charging tuition to students from other houses, and some schools also grant scholarships via examination, in theory open to all. Academics turned through the minor institutions are respected professionals, but they lack the prestige of the major schools. Many who pursue the science seriously consider the minor academies a poor imitation to their more storied progenitors.
The elder of the two is the Scholomance, also called the University. It was the first house in which pattern languages were studied systematically, and it claims to have invented the teachable curriculums that allow this. The Scholomance is a sprawling campus of lecture halls, dormitories, and student and tutor accommodation. Its teachings and methods are, in theory, completely secret to those outside its walls, but they have enough graduates and public scrutiny that the reality is a little different: there are 'levels' of training that students can take on - the teaching of the so-called 'surface' levels, which are structured around large lectures, essays, and both theoretical and practical examinations, are widely visible, and constitute the public perception of academic training. The 'lower' and 'submerged' levels are theoretical courses, taught by individuals or small group of tenured professors, and are usually invite only. It is very rare that a student whose study is made up entirely of 'surface' training will be capable of communication with entities, although they might make fine theoreticians, pattern-linguists, or historians. The structure of the lower and submerged curriculums is usually somewhere between an open secret and a mystery cult - initiates are brought through the stages of their lowering, and are tested at each stage, with the express intention of ensuring that the valuable and dangerous knowledge bound up in pattern languages stays with the 'right people'. The professorship of the University are, on the whole, patriotic, and politically conservative, although the nature of their work, with its secrecy, and its broad leeway for individual tutors to study and teach their own special interests, means that it is difficult to draw this net too tightly. In particular, many tutors find their research and teachings at odds with those of the church, and the rivalry between the two institutions is storied.
The newer of the two major academies is less than one hundred years old, but is both larger and (very arguably) currently more influential in day to day capital politics than the University. It is called the School of Practical Linguistics and Semiotics, and, though it owns and maintains many buildings throughout the capital, it has no fixed campus. The School (every knows what you mean), was founded by breakaway tutors from the University who were formally disbarred for political reasons now lost to time. The tuition is cheaper, and the entrance exam is notably less particular about the class of person who sits for it. The School gives its lectures in large public buildings, and publishes practical manuals and volumes for consumption by a general reading public. The University likes to deride these books as essentially worthless, un-rigorous, middle-brow garbage, published for rubes with delusions of erudition - it is certainly true that no one ever learned a pattern language by studying one. The School says that they raise the level of the general public's understanding of their tradition, and they also make enormous amounts of money.
The School's reputation is for no-frills, functional, industry-focused and high-quality tuition. They turn out academics with trades and work ethic, although like the University, the majority of their graduates do not actually deal with entities directly. The stereotypical School graduate is a serious and motivated young person with a sharpened disdain for tradition, secrecy, and mysticism. The infamous THREE WORD GANGS grew from informal groups and cliques of students at the School, and their spread through the undergraduates of the University, despite attempts to stamp them out by its faculty, has been read by many as a decisive shift in power between the two.
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MISC NOTES
- The Scholomance was originally a school of rhetoric, though not many know this. It was the study of the linguistic relationships between the human mind and the beings called forth by artists that lead to the development of the first systematic grammars and lexicons for pattern languages.
- Three word gangs are an omnipresent fact of life for students at the academies, and even the minor institutions unofficially host their own. When you start tuition, most people would expect you to join one - those who choose not to are making a highly visible and legible choice. Like many other aspects of student life, the three word gangs are organised into secret 'levels' of leadership and seniority.
- Mirrors and entities: I've said before that entities don't like mirrors - this should be formalised. You cannot summon any entity if you can see your own reflection in a mirrored surface, it simply refuses to arrive. If you find yourself in a situation where your entity is summoned and you can see your own reflection, the entity will take 1 psychic damage per turn that you are so exposed. This is not true in the dreamlands, where mirrors are a different thing.
- The Practical School has its graduates headhunted preferentially by the Baroness' spy service, in keeping with her general attitude towards progress and modernisation - they have the same 'spirit of the times' that she does, and fit readily into the existing work culture. The Scholomance still has the money, resources, institutional knowledge, and brand pull to produce a generally higher quality of pure research - Academics from all institutions base their cutting-edge work on the publications of the University.
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