Friends! The forums turned me onto the solution (at least for me). It might also explain why solutions work for some and not for others.
Right next to or under the mission marker for specializations, there is another one! You can see the color shift slightly as you pass over it. When you were getting the wrong teachers, you were clicking the wrong one! They are so close together that they seem like one marker, but there are two.
So YOU DONT HAVE TO START OVER.
Let me know if it's just me or if this fixes it foir you as well.