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[Ashley]

In my opinion some RPers adopt this belief because they want their characters to be closer to normal humans that PF actually supports.   It's in the same vein as the skillsoft/meat-cpu vs 'I know kung-fu' transhuman/demi-god debate concerning how skillbooks work and I wish CCP would clarify both.    It's something that seems to really divide RPers and creates drastically different OOC understanding of the universe our characters share.

Or maybe it's also a common theory among RPers to explain why all the empire stupidly let us go away/freelance like that instead of keeping us enlisted and under control : where we actually are only the leftovers/loose ends of every academy.

Or maybe we are let go freelance because of hidden CONCORD accords, or whatever.

Could be anything, players willing to be closer to normal humans or not.

Or maybe
the best control is when your subject thinks that he is completely free and has absolute control of his own actions and/or destiny.

[Z.Sinraali]

One of the things we thought of, to explain things such as why it says "Imperial Academy" or "Hedion University" for our characters employment, was that those institutions also validate training/education from other sources, via whatever methods.

I like that idea. Opens up a lot of background possibilities.

[Vieve]

It's in the same vein as the skillsoft/meat-cpu vs 'I know kung-fu' transhuman/demi-god debate concerning how skillbooks work and I wish CCP would clarify both.    It's something that seems to really divide RPers and creates drastically different OOC understanding of the universe our characters share.

Huh.  I must have missed that debate.  But I've been over in the corner thinking that skillbooks are just another way CONCORD and/or the Empires keep track and/or exert control over capsuleers, even if those capsuleers believe they're independent of both.

'Oh, sure, you capsuleer guys can have all these shortcuts that get you out of years of training -- but we can take that knowledge away from you when we feel like it.  Also, you're going to have to keep coming to us, or stealing from people who have come to us in order to get all of your technical knowledge in future.  Your brain is now wired so that you won't be able to learn that shit from experience like regular humans do.'

'Piss us off bad enough, and we'll start deleting stuff out of your minds.  You could wind up being nothing but a piece of meat floating in a little egg inside a ship you don't know how to fly anymore.'

[Synthia]

One of the things we thought of, to explain things such as why it says "Imperial Academy" or "Hedion University" for our characters employment, was that those institutions also validate training/education from other sources, via whatever methods.

I like that idea. Opens up a lot of background possibilities.

\o/

glad that something we've thought of, is useful to others

[Ashley]

Was searching for something and found this - click. It's not wiki, but word of CCP Eterne is pretty much the law. (at least it is in my book) 

"As for why empires "train" capsuleers for free, remember two things:
1) Only one school for each empire is a military academy; the other two schools are typical universities that are large and prestigious enough to offer pod pilot programs. Someone, somewhere is paying for it and it's probably not the governments of the empires themselves.
2) Players are only a portion of the capsuleers in the backstory. At least some number of capsuleers do continue to work for the empires directly."

[Katrina Oniseki]

I'm more interested in what sort of educational standards are in these schools. Not to say that other players are doing it wrong, but there seems to be a wide variance in how 'educated' capsuleers are, even from the same school. As a fictitious example:

Character Bob has graduated from the State War Academy and does not know basic scientific laws of thermodynamics, does not know how to drive a car, and does not know the difference between a fission or fusion reactor. Has trouble when asked to do basic mathematics, or when asked to explain how his ship goes forward: "Why does a dog bark?! It just does!" Has been quoted saying he didn't bother taking school seriously, fell asleep during class.

Character Sally has graduated from SWA and claims to be highly qualified in astronautics, graviton engineering, and attained a medical doctorate, is a gourmet chef, was trained to be a Triple Dragon Tiger Master Black Belt in Space-Fu. Has been quote saying this was all standard training during the schooling, required learning for any capsule pilot.

Granted, both players are stretching suspension of disbelief right now, but the greater confusion of "what exactly do they teach?" comes up. We have some surprisingly uneducated "trailer park pilots" in the scene, and then we have bleeding edge scientists and military officers.... from the same school. It's often a running gag about 'graduation standards' that's mumbled OOC, but what standards can we agree really exist?

The only solution I can come up with is that Capsuleer Training isn't college at all, but is comparable to a few weeks of job training and implant surgery. Capsuleers are trained literally only on how to handle the very basic operations of their capsules, and nothing else. They get implants shoved in, and they're thrown through the game tutorial to finish up training. This is the only explanation I can conceive that defines how two characters from the same school and the same year can be so wildly different... one actually went there for college, the other didn't.

[Steffanie Saissore]

The way I approached the education, at least with Steff, was that the Cap program is geared towards training the individual how to handle the basics of ship engineering, fitting, piloting, electronics, etc...all the stuff you need to get into a frigate and hopefully undock without causing an incident.  I also think the program would handle dealing with the implants and the side-effects.

All of the other stuff (medical, officer training, etc.) could potentially be done in tandem with the Cap program or may have been done prior to or after completion of the Cap program.

Just my two cents.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

I think I had Capsuleer training be a basic 'how to fly a ship and the basics of piloting' course.

But Pieter took additional vocational retraining to turn him from a Cop into a Pilot.

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

Seems to me that capsuleer training is provided by these schools as a service, perhaps through an annex program, in the same vein as private pilot's training. Some testing, some surgery, a few weeks and there you go. This allows for people who say "I took the SWA correspondence course over a month in my spare time, now I'm a starship captain!", while also allowing for people who have gone through degree programs with capsuleer training on the side.

Probably the toughest thing to swallow in this idea is leadership training. Learning how to lead, manage and motivate groups of people is a major part of modern officer training. While I could see the GrimDarque world of Eve saying "Bob here took a four week correspondence course in starship captaining, now he's flying a battleship with a crew of 7000", I couldn't see it going well.

But what the hell, this is a spaceship game.

[Shiori]

I can only imagine that near the end of their correspondense course, new capsuleers are given a slip of paper with the number of a local job centre, and instructions to call them and say the phrase "I have more money than God, please find me some people to handle finding and managing more people for me."