I happen to like Univ very much. I think it's the most drastically different structured of all the EPs. It's quite a different game from everything else. I love that it permits you to play the game in a totally different way.

First thing I would change is that EVERY sim should get the cutaway arrival at their dorm (unless the player turns the cinematics off). I hate that if my sim arrives to a dorm that already has playable students, they just plop out of the cab and walk in to claim a door. For that reason, I have a "Freshman Dorm" that each sim moves into in their first semester, just to get them the cinematic. After a semester, they move into one of the other dorms, so that another sim can move in and get their own cinematic. haha

Next, i'd spike some of the relatives' memories. Maybe parents and grandparents would remember, but I don't need my sim remembering every single time his 2 older brothers and 3 older sisters got an A. Who cares!?

I'd make community lot cafeterias instead of dorm kitchens. The microwaves and mini-fridges should be all that you really get in the dorms. You should have to go out to the caf or order pizza. This would also be a great place to add some cafeteria mechanics and objects to the game that i have always wanted. In TS1, they had the Cheap Eats Counter (pic available here: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/s...=20190214170520 ). I think the sims could get a burger, a hot dog or pizza... It could contain more and better food options than that, but it would allow the sims to buy a single meal option, and either use it as take-out to eat back at the dorm OR sit at a table with other sims, where they could eat and socialize, like a real campus cafeteria. Something like the "Pasticcetera" Pastry Cart (also from TS1) could be used for a similar purpose in campus coffee shops... The thing is, it would allow sims to eat out in a social setting without going restaurant-style. Most of our campus cafs didn't have wait staff! [Ed. Note: this object would also be great for OFB in giving the sims the option to have cafeteria style dining in their bakeries and whatnot, along with a takeout option... something i've wanted for EONS!) And, since when was food at school FREE? In my memory, it was ULTRA-Expensive! This would add a need for earning money.

I would also like grades to be harder. Not all, but some professors do give better grades to students they like and worse grades to the ones they don't. Perhaps if doing your homework and attending classes gave you relationship points with your prof, and not doing them decreased the relationship, which then had some impact on grades would make for an interesting tweak. Something has to give, because everybody can't be valedictorian. Perhaps there ought to be some chance cards that would apply modifiers to your grade. That way, nothing is a given. There's always a bit more randomness in your student grade. Something's needed to make grades more variable.

The money system is kind of dumb, too. Maybe there should be a tuition cost mechanic. Perhaps the parents would have to spend §X to get the student into school. After that, at the end of each semester, the student would be charged a fee, to attend classes next semester. This is where a financial benefit to good grades would come in, but without being handed a check by the school. If you get good grades, your sim's tuition costs would be reduced. And the rest, they would need to have in their bank account, in order to continue. Now, just so there's no "whoops!" moments, perhaps there would be a Financial Aid make-up semester. The first time you don't have the money for tuition, you get put into a Financial Aid category. Miss 2 in a row (or maybe just miss twice during your academic career) and you must leave campus, just like getting failing grades. Or perhaps, if that's too harsh, your sim could call home and beg the parents for tuition money, which would be deducted from the family account. It would make more sense that as a sim with good grades, you'd qualify for grant money or whatever. The financial requirement would also help make it not so easy to do everything. Sims would need to find ways to make money, which could be working as a barista, performing for tips, making and selling items, working as a clerk/cashier, proctoring, tutoring, etc. It would add to the challenge!

I think the game should randomize every dormie's major... It's lame, to have everybody undecided. It's hard to form beneficial study groups, because study groups benefit from having the same major. Everybody's undecided, except some playables living in other residence halls. Shouldn't be that way. The game should also have changed the degree requirements. I hate that you can't be an artist unless you go to college. "Yes, you can only be creative if you attend a school, sit in a classroom, read about art styles, and then conform to them to a professor's satisfaction!" Ugh! Creativity GroupThink. However, you can go right into being a brain surgeon, as long as you got through High School with a C- !! Another thing is, perhaps some careers, you should not be able to reach the upper echelon job levelss without a degree... Depending on the job, maybe you can't advance beyond lvl 8... or maybe the promotion requirements are more difficult to advance beyond that point... this way you CAN... but you'll have to put in more work, if you're going to.

I think you should also be able to live in a "double". This way you could share a room with a sim roommate. MAYBE it's a friend... Maybe it's a complete stranger. Perhaps if they're not playables, they would work like the roommates in AL. It's a crapshoot IRL... sometimes you get a messy roommate that's too much of a slob. Sometimes you get a neat freak, that's way too damn annoying! Maybe they'd bring a date back to the room and shoo you away. Maybe they'd sit up all night playing with their guitar or studying. If you're compatible and into that, it's no problem. If you're not... more campus drama.

I believe Univ is what gave us the option to throw Sports Parties (correct me if i'm wrong, it was a loooong time ago that I added it!)... but Sports Parties are rather horribly conceived. There's not really much about them that makes them different from house parties. Maybe sims should arrive in team related apparel. Maybe watching the game on the big TV should be a bigger draw, so that it has SOMETHING to do with sports! And if you don't put on the game, your sports party takes a hit! Maybe if you put it on the radio, you get a small boost, and if you put it on the TV you get a decent boost. Maybe the party score is effected by the team winning or losing... Might be interesting if this score was adjusted by quarter /round /period... After the first, coin flip -- is your team winning Y/N? mood impact dependent on result. Second quarter, same thing... By the final, your team maybe maintains their lead (+), or never quite catches up (-), or maybe there's a come-from-behind victory! (++) Or maybe a crushing collapse! (- -) This could also create memories and sims who were at the party will share these memories together for a limited period of time.

There should also be social interactions (which would've been included in my FIX for NightLife bars). When they're on campus and they've got the fruit punch and/or a bar in their dorm, they should have more bar related social interactions... There should be some unique flirt options. But there should be some good group social activities. Telling bar stories and/or bar jokes, singing bawdy bar songs together, doing team-related chants (particularly for sports parties) together, and things like that... Everybody (potentially) joins in and gets a social boost.

I also use Vacation to send my sims on Spring Break once during their college experience. Usually 2nd semester of their junior year. Could be a more incorporated thing... but it's not really absolutely necessary.

Those are the things i can think of, off the top of my head. But i think Univ is the most original EP in the series, and i think it's a fantastic addition. Could things have been done different/better? Of course! ...because I'm not under any deadline pressure and I don't have to have the ability to make it all work! hahaha... But it really is a very fun game, and i've still not figured all of it out yet. I'm quite looking forward to it!


-grinEvilly
>=)

Nice, @grinevilly!

A double room is possible. You just need to give a dorm room 2 doors so that both sims can claim it.

I am not so worried about the money system - I just see them as students with bursaries. It has taken me around 5 seconds to accept that all sims can go to Uni with bursaries.

I have a sport club and use the group outings phone function to send my sporty sims there - they mostly throw football or play kicky bag despite having the sport stuff - but they are allowed to choose their own sport


One of my sims married the Lama mascot. Back when Uni came out, I was a very new player. At the time I thought he was a donkey I also did not know I had to change his hair, so he walked around with his lama head until he died of old age I also noticed that the cow mascot was a very pretty girl when she took baths in the dorm - but my very neat and available student found her too smelly, or I may have had a cow head in my game for years too
Of course I did not know that cows can be banned - but they are still unbanned in my game - I like to use these things in the game in a way that suits me.
One of my fortune sims married his Economics professor - she was lovely and had zero skills Since she was not a drama prof, I guess it is a good thing that he skilled up before Uni!

Uni - and the rest of the game - all have some flaws, but imho, there are more than enough options in the game for the player to adjust, do a variety of things and have a lot of fun.

@grinevilly, I actually made a mod that fixes this. If you're interested, it's here.

Again, as far as I am concerned, they do have degrees. Because that is what you get if you go to Uni here.

If you read the rubric for Sims in the base game Medical career, you will see that they do have degrees, or at least they they get their degree when they reach the level of Intern:
'There's an "M.D." after your name, but it seems you spend more time doing paperwork and changing bandages than saving lives. . . .'
When they're at the level of Paramedic, it says they are working as paramedics while studying part-time for their medical degrees. So every Sim in the Medical career at the level of Intern or above is a graduate, and I suppose, one way or another, I should try to give them degree certificates.

On a slightly off-topic but related note, is "M.D." the normal qualification for doctors in America? In the UK, the usual degree for medics is MBChB (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery), so calling them "doctor" is strictly speaking a courtesy title. As I understand it, MD (Doctor of Medicine) is a postgraduate degree equivalent in rank to PhD (Doctor of Philosophy), and only a minority of physicians study for it.

Thanks for that link, KittyCarey! And hat-tip to JustPetro, for the double dorm info! I'll have to go edit some dorms! hahaha.

I think, if Univ had all the stuff i dreamed of, I'd probably want longer semesters in my game, so I'd have more time to explore all the options! It's kind of silly that after you graduate, you get to remain on campus for a semester. But i suppose your time at college is supposed to fly by too fast, and leave you with all kinds of nostalgic memories, huh?

The money thing isn't a deal-breaker for me. I just thought it could be done better. That's all. It seems that having more time demands would make perfect grades a bit more challenging. And when I said that the parents would pay §X to send their kids to school the first semester, that would also be reduced by scholarships the kids earned before going off to school. I had also previously posted a "Door Dash" career idea here that could be available to anyone, but would be a decent "money for college" kind of gig career.

Finally, re: MD... i'm no expert, AndrewGloria, but typically "Doctor" refers to a practitioner of medicine, whereas the title for a PhD is more of a courtesy. You're usually only called "Doctor" if you practice medicine or work on a college campus and have your doctorate. The First Lady of the United States created some controversy when she insisted on being called Dr. Jill Biden, because she has her doctorate in education (Ed.D), not medicine. Not a political judgment... just an example. Hope that clears things up!


-gE
>=)

M.D. - a medical doctor, and we call them Doctor.
PhD - a doctoral degree in another field, and we call them Doctor as well If the Doctor is a professor too, he may be called Professor Doctor in very formal writing
Not an issue for us, we go with the flow

@grinevilly - I think, and it slipped my mind for a moment earlier, that I first saw those double rooms when I once played Mootilda's University - those were, I believe, made for sims who are married at uni (I don't use the mod, though) - but since then I have made plenty of double dorm rooms.

Actually, "Doctor" originally meant something similar to "teacher", and PhDs (Doctor of Philosophy) have had the title for longer than medics had. Physicians (as opposed to surgeons) started using "doctor" to emphasise their university education, and it sort of drifted over to everyone else we now call a doctor. While it's true that many people with PhDs and other doctorates in subjects other than medicine rarely use their title outside of academia, that doesn't mean it's just a courtesy. Dr Jill Biden earned her title and is perfectly within her rights to use it.

Sorry to derail a bit - I have a PhD (though I'm not going to insist on being Dr KittyCarey ) and it was a lot of hard work to earn that title and the funny hat

Yes, i'm aware. I have google too. hahaha! =)
But AndrewGloria was asking how it's used in the US today, not how it was used 800+ years ago. I don't believe it merely drifted. Outside of academia, people with doctorates are rarely called "doctor" unless they insist on it, which kind of tends to draw eyerolls... they may be perfectly entitled to, just like they're entitled to shove chopsticks up their nostrils and bark like a seal, if they so choose... but if you were introduced to someone and they asked you what you did for a living, you'd not say, "i'm a doctor" because you have a doctorate in a subject outside of medicine. If you were to say that, you'd probably ask what kind of medicine you practiced, and you'd have to explain, "not that kind of doctor." Off-campus, people with doctorates are hardly ever called "doctor" and hardly ever ask to be. Bill Cosby had (and still has) a number of doctorates from a number of universities, in a number of categories, including Doctorate of Law, Humanities, Fine Arts, Music, Humane Letters (whatever the heck that is), Education, and more... But we don't call him Dr. Cosby (we called him Dr. Huxtable), and we now refer to him as Prisoner № NN7687... although I suppose you could call him Dr. Prisoner № NN7687 if you like. =)

But back to University, I had kinda hoped that it would be possible to have a servo on-campus... at least in a Greek House. it just seems like the kind of thing a Greek House might have. But servos are always adults. I know you can have a mechanical bench and build toy robots and crap on campus, but I don't think you can activate a servo. I thought maybe i could use OFB to set one for sale (you can) and buy one... but apparently, I'm told you can't activate it on campus.. Kinda stinky. I wouldn't want servo to be a perpetual student (since they never age), nor would i want servo to be a regular student. I'd sorta just want them to be almost like a House Master type of thing, keeping the House in running order forever. Disappointing, but... Oh well!


-gE
>=)

I've found a Mod here for the tuition thing though it's an object Mod and allow the tuition to be just an option so some high school campuses are public and won't charge students to attend while others are private schools and students pay to attend.I also have non-default majors that are in easier and harder versions so they can have easier or harder classes while default options are still available and an object to allow selecting a major to be easier.I also use a brea object to set a break and have objects to adjust the campus clock or reset the timer and it can be paused or restarted.

@grinevilly It would be so great to have a servo at university - a Sims 1 servo. I miss them still. They always did all the chores and otherwise we're just objects.
Sims 2 servos are Sims! They can't just clean your house and be shut down when not in use. They have personalities and wants and needs. Making cleaning their main purpose takes away their agency, and I hate that.
Plus, you can't have them at university.
Honestly, not have YA as a separated life stage only at university would be great.

There's a funny story about this EP from my experience. I was 8 years old when my 11 year old friend was telling me about The Sims 2 EPs and this particular EP. I was impressionable and blindly believed everything she was saying and she was a pathological liar. The friendship didn't last obviously. Now back to University - she was saying that this EP made school and college PLAYABLE, basically Get To Work 2005 edition lmao. When I finally got to play this EP in 2017ish and knowing the game, I didn't expect that to be possible. I don't understand why they didn't even try to make lectures at college possible.

Overall, SIms 2 uni is painfully boring. The parties are boring, so is the studying and lasts sooo long. I like the Sims 3 version more but the parties were horrible. They shoud've made YA an age group outside of uni. I don't send my sims to college but rather cheat into giving them a degree and create memories in SimPe. I was thinking about sending my favorite sim sisters because I didn't play uni for a long time and want to give it a chance.

@Coriel_Muroz -- After reading your post, i felt a little nostalgic, so I looked up the TS1 Livin' Large Servo and found this:

"Shiny Things Inc. makes dreams come alive! Meet Servo, our new experimental home robot. Tired of cleaning? Cooking? Gardening? REPAIRING? Your lack of respect for the dignity of work gives Servo a reason to live! Servo is self-powered, self-guiding, self-cleaning and self-denying! Concentrate on living. Let Servo do the rest!!!"

"Self-denying!" exarctly!! "Concentrate on living and let Servo do the rest!!!" Not with TS2 servos! You have to concentrate on them, to make sure their wants are filled, their motives are up, etc. What kind of robo-servant is that? Also, as you said, since TS1 servos were just objects, they didn't take up any space in your family! You could have 8 members and a servo! No big deal!! That'd be PERFECT for University! They should be self-denying and respect our sims' lack of respect for the dignity of work!! No refusing to do work because they're in a bad mood! That's what my sims are for!

TS1 servos were so much better.

@moonlight__ -- sooo... what would you do different to make Univ less boring? I cant imagine sitting through sim lectures would carry all that much of a replayability draw. I suppose you could use the FT hobby "talk about" feature to simulate lectures but... that's not exactly the most exciting interaction in the game. I imagine playing lectures, much like traveling to work and playing a desk job, would likely be something most players ffwd on the highest speed possible.


-gE
>=)

Ohh sorry, I thought the 2nd paragraphing was obvious. Firstly, I would put an emphasis on the 'experience' like we see in movies, so more fun and socializing and less boring studying. Cafeterias with display windows and trays would be nice. Having subcultures too, especially because the game offers a lot of alternative clothes, maybe similar like in TS3 but much harder and they can't be a jock and a nerd at the same time. For example, to become a metalhead/punk/goth, they would have to listen to their radio station, befriend other metalheads/punks/goths, read their magazines, attend their parties, complete tasks etc. To become a material girl (lol), they would need to spend a lot of money on clothes and furniture and shop clothes often, read fashion magazines and befriend other girls like them. Parties that don't flop because sims went to bed or to do something else would be nice. As an uni student currently studying for an exam, I don't need my sims to have the same monotony, because it's a fun game and quickly getting promotions for minimum wage jobs is even more unrealistic. Maybe an option if we would want to play the lecture part would be nice. If yes, we could choose how much effort does your sim put in and if the sim could leave the lecture and chill in the buildings' coffee shop, at least that's allowed in my college. It would also be fun if the sim could have practice classes, for example a language and literature student would have to volunteer at an elementary school for a short time, or a science student at a laboratory and a medical student at the hospital.

boring studying? Never had that problem, my sims skill on the uni community lots, and since there are a lot of them, they can do different things at the same time. Mark can sit down to study cleaning, but Elena can choose between the golf putter (career reward) or the mirror or the performance mike for her charisma - or the political career podium (and I love this one, because other sims come to sit down and listen to the sppeaker); Terence can do some Tai Chi on the lawn if he needs a body skill point, Marina may have to work on her semester assignment, but Lee is free to social and so is Kris, and there are plenty of other YA's to do that with - many of them my own playables who just live in a different dorm.

Imagination is kind of important to enjoy the Sims 2 (not only Uni).

You are in charge of how much fun and socializing there is vs. studying, just like in the main hood. Socializing is at the center of my own University play. The game mechanics give inactive sims a high probability of sitting down to do group research or assignments in idle moments, but you can disrupt those. The only studying that must be done is to open the grade bar if you want the sim to pass, and with fast uni skilling and skilling on community lots (and possibly the Fall skilling bonus, too, depending on how you set the seasons in your university hood) this is so easily done that most of us have to institute play rules or mods to keep all our sims from dean's listing all the time. Skilling is much duller in the main hood!

The clubs you want sound easy enough to set up with playstyle rules, though I will concede that it could be even better with coding. Not if it wasn't done any better than the AL social groups, though, which is the same base idea.

You are also in charge of how well parties do. Learn the mechanics and pay attention to the time and you'll almost never see a party tank - certainly not due to things like going to bed in the middle. The Sports party might as well not exist for all the coding it got, and I can think of options that would have made togas better and more distinctive, but I have a lot of roof raisers which end with a guest or two I hadn't noticed was missing bidding the host good bye in their pjs, so even a nap attack won't tank a well-thrown party. Throwing Sims 2 parties is a skill and, like all skills, is easy once you know how to do it. If you insist on all your sims living in dorms you will have to use a mod to get more than two guests to a college party, and you will have to watch their tendency to vanish into dorm rooms, but in residences and Greeks all you need is to invite people who already like each other at least moderately and a willingness to use your active sims to keep the social interactions moving. The Influence system introduced in University was specifically designed to break up study groups and assignment taking, and once the party scenario starts the host will start rolling influence wants so you earn those points nearly as fast as you spend them.

The lots on the pre-made universities mostly suck, but this is also fixable, and at this stage you don't even have to fix them yourself. Players have made a number of custom universities available, many of them right here on MTS, some of them using items from later EPs and all of them addressing problems like too-large lots and community lots without skilling items. It's also fairly easy to find makeovers of premade lots on the same principle. My own LGU (see sig) uses no lots larger than 3x3 so your computer doesn't use all its processing speed rendering the lot instead of populating it and your sims don't cross Siberia only to have the sim they've gone to say Hi to wander off when reached. I also didn't use any custom or later-EP items at LGU, so you can see what I personally would have done different if I had been one of the developers right there in the neighborhood, with skilling items and fun and group activities on all the lots, lots themed for different courses of study and leisure activities, a definite campus geographical structure, and room on the lots and in the neighborhoods for adding features from later EPs to make it even better. Adding restaurants on campus works great and means you don't have to stop the semester timer to fill an "eat out" want when dating.

Speaking from the missed opportunity standpoint, University would have been the time to work out a really good mechanic for performances. The busking feature, which enables sims to join someone playing for tips, was introduced for this EP and does it passably with a little planning - LGU has multiple venues for this - but ALT in particular has community lots which are clearly set up to use for concerts and plays which are basically neighborhood decoration in the absence of a way to gather a sit-down audience and present a drama, or to pay a band other than by going onto the stage to tip them. Just think of being able to hire the Shifting Paradymes to provide live music for your toga party! And you have to be Johnny-on-the-spot with your playable band to get them all playing together without a visiting sim butting in to take over the drums, or to keep your playable band all playing together for the duration of a set without somebody dropping out, though that's also a play challenge and partly a matter of monitoring needs so I won't whine about it too much. But a gig mechanic would also have had its play challenge and been, I think, more versatile, not only in University but in the main hood.

(This is hardly the place to go into the matter, so mea culpa, but I've called, and heard called, plenty of people with non-medical doctorates addressed as "Dr" in my time, sometimes Dr. Last Name, sometimes Dr. First Name, depending on circumstances and relationship. It's not pretentious in most American subcultures for a Ph.D. to use Dr. as their preferred mode of address, though anyone who signs their name First Name, Last Name, Ph.D. is almost invariably full of crap. One sees that a lot in Fortean circles, with for instance someone with a Ph.D. in astrophysics writing a UFO book which doesn't deal with astrophysics at all. As someone of my acquaintance who had a Ph.D. said when the subject came up: "Having a Ph.D., just means you successfully defending your thesis. It doesn't mean you're smart." The "controversy" to which grinevilly refers is 100% political posturing on the one side, aligning themselves with anti-intellectual groups who always feel condescended to around educated people whether the educated people are being condescending or not, and about equal amounts political posturing ("We're the side that actually knows things!") and responding to rudeness on the other. Just call people what they want to be called, it's not that hard! Nobody is refusing to call "Dr. Oz," currently running for office in Pennsylvania, by his nickname even though he has no doctorate. Sorry to bring it up again; it was itching my brain a little but I've said what I had to say and that can be finished now for all of me.)

Dr Oz has a medical degree, which kinda goes to prove the point. And "Dr Oz" is not a nickname. His full name is Mehmet Oz, and he is a medical doctor. I'm an American and a Pennsylvanian. I used the "Dr Jill Biden" example as merely an example... not to politicize. I also used the "Dr Cosby" example, which no one politicized. I'm willing to bet that in the majority of cases, you (general, not directed at anyone individually) are likely are unaware whether someone you're dealing with has a doctorate degree or not. However, if they practice medicine, you likely know they're a doctor. The exception might be within the ivory towers of academia. Assuming anyone who finds it somewhat unusual for a woman with a doctorate of education demanding to be called "doctor" is "anti-intellectual" is a bit presumptuous and really unfair. "Doctor" in the US, overwhelmingly refers to someone who practices medicine, which is what AndrewGloria asked about. When you hear the word "doctor" you think of a guy in a white coat, with a tongue depressor and a stethoscope. You don't think of a person with an octagonal miter on their head, and a billowy scroll of vast intellect from which they dispense knowledge. If you want proof, look at children's toys and books. "Doctor" conjures up a specific image, to which the other image is an alternate exception. 100% legitimate, but a minor exception, nevertheless.

And @Peni Griffin -- i agree with you 100%, that University is as social and fun as you make it... much like every other EP. You provided a lot of really good info on the topic! The EP that I find most in need of an overhaul is Pets. The furry critters in the EP are more of a nuisance, whereas IRL, they're a blessing! But I suppose that's for another thread. hahaha

We now return you to your regularly scheduled "University" discussion. =)


-gE
>=)

@Peni Griffin -I've used a few onject Mods to allow better control over time in the campus allowing breaks for fun or extra studying as the students will vary in how the use the extra time and I can slow semester progression down to allow the students more time to have fun or catch up to be able to pass.I will use mostly my own premade dorms or build my own new ones and will also select a template for a campus which means I have to build all of the campus buildings which is easy and slwoly gets done with just a few at the start for when the campus is opened and using Mods to shut down the wants to attend is also helpful as no town has a campus for at least a generation and it can even take longer as in some cases they might not even get a school right away and no kids attend the campus if the never attended school or had home-schooling.

Well, I have to admit I've never sat down and listened to a Sim professor delivering a lecture, but I have quite often sat through one of the Rev. Elspeth Anderson's three-hour Sunday sermons in St. Simeon's Parish Church in Veronaville. And I have to admit that, even if some of my church-going Sims find them spiritually uplifting, for a non-Simlish speaker like myself, the Rev. Elspeth's sermons can be just a tad boring to listen to.

Now, the Rev. Elspeth is able to preach these sermons, because I have a hacked pulpit downloaded from RetailSims (originally ReligioSims). It's based on the Bushmaster teleprompter (the career reward in the Politics career). Now it seems to me that there isn't all that much difference between a lecture and a sermon. (Some German theology professors I've come across seem not to see any difference -- they delivered lectures in church, and preached sermons in the lecture theatre.) So I suspect a moderately talented modder would be able to convert the pulpit into a college lectern without too much bother. I would think it would mainly be a case of editing the text strings, changing "sermon" to "lecture".

A little note about the Rev. Elspeth Anderson's sermons at St Simeon's Parish Church in Veronaville. It has become the custom for Andrew to go to the front of the church at the end of the sermon, and hug or kiss the Rev Elspeth to thank her. I've never been quite sure whether he's thanking her for the sermon -- or for stopping!!

https://modthesims.info/d/566690/th...ccessories.html
and others by Sophie David - I don't know what was used to create the opportunity pack lecterns - but I have lecture halls in my uni hood using almost all of these mods.
Is that what you had in mind, @AndrewGloria?

@Justpetro and @Peni Griffin thank you for those tips !!!

I just downaloded soms Mods to alter the semester length for my game as I always felt the the default was too short and my sims laways missed out on many things because they would simply have no time for any of it.

So I think the confusion here came from the differences between British English and American English on the use of the word "courtesy" (and apparently Australian English falls on the British side of this one :P). A courtesy title, as per the wikipedia discussion, is one that "does not have legal significance but rather is used through custom or courtesy" - in the UK, most medical doctors don't legally have the title "Dr" because they don't in fact have a doctorate, but because we describe their profession as "doctor" they are allowed to use it by custom, as it were. AndrewGloria was asking whether most US medical doctors do in fact have doctorates, to which it seems the answer is "yes" (I confess I have no idea about Australian ones!). Grinevilly then said that it was non-medical doctorate holders who are "Dr" by courtesy, which confused me because PhDs etc. do have the full legally significant title, in the US as well as the rest of the world. Whether someone with a particular title chooses to use it is a whole separate question - and, thanks to the world sadly being a bigoted place on occasion, there are gendered and racial reasons for insisting sometimes.

Back to University EP, I used to find it really boring when I first played, and would avoid it. Now, I really enjoy it - but part of that is both making grades harder to get and shortening semesters.

I find that longer semesters by default along with having non-default easier and harder versions of the majors along with the default ones offers more options to make that campus play more fun and more interesting as there's more options for students where those who didn't do as well earlier in their earlier school days can take the easier majors and those who did especially well take on herder versions and those with average grades take the default majors.
I also love that Modded object that allow me to choose to add tuition reqirements to a future student and to choose the level of the tuition they'll be paying based on what the family can afford.Not all of the kids ever get to go even when it's modern times because there are some who didn't do weel enough in school earlier or like in the earlier times when school wasn't even required by law not all children or kids would even get educated like what was the case until a few decades into the 20th century.

I didn't know about the Sophie David lecterns, but they look as if they have similar functionality to the one I have. Sadly the RetailSims site (where I got mine) is no more. The site owner (not a Simmer herself) did however keep it running for many months at her own expense to allow Simmers time to download things. If I recall correctly she was the widow of the creator. ReligioSims was originally a domain of its own, but later became part of RetailSims. The pulpit can n be downloaded here on Sim File Share. It's part of the Christian Items set. Like Sophie David's lecterns it's clearly based on the Politics Career Reward. As I recall, it has two options "Practice" and "Deliver Sermon". Once the preacher starts to preach (perhaps sooner -- I can't remember) the option Listen is also available, and I think some Sims start to listen autonomously. Strictly speaking the pulpit should probably be called a lectern, but it's perfectly possible to preach from a lectern. Indeed many churches today, including my own, have done away with the old elevated pulpit and the minister/pastor/priest preaches from a lectern. This pulpit has a cross on the front, and a large book, presumably a Bible on top. I was thinking that to use it in a university setting, all you would really need to do would be to change the text string from "Deliver Sermon" to "Deliver Lecture". Keener modders might add a menu option so it can be used for both lectures and sermons. And graphically talented modders might want to remove the cross and the Bible. (Many universities had Christian origins, so I don't think it's absolutely necessary to remove them.)



Sorry for the delay in replying. I've some Real Life issues just now.