University has an opportunity to add a fair amount to the game if done right. We already have so much "young adult party life", and we even have ways to skill up and jump ahead in your career before you even age up to a YA. Even on a normal lifespan setting, I can have a child get a number of boosts and go into his teenage years ready to skill up and get enough satisfaction points to get Connected, and boom, I've got a legitimately well prepared YA sim that will have zero trouble with the job I want them to have - regardless of whether I selected personally in my mind, or randomly rolled a trait that kinda told me what the kid was gonna do itself.
Don't get me wrong. I would not hate University if it was indeed "party, skill up, jump ahead in your career, and maybe have a few new careers that are locked behind a degree". Honestly, having the opportunity for story telling, and the Sim have a nice little Diploma (wall decoration that may have a Confident aura, perhaps?) would be nice, regardless of whether or not it's only what you can already do in game. Even though "techncally a different way to do stuff you could already do" doesn't bother me as much as it does with some people, I have to wonder...can't we have options to do old things, and a few new things as well?
Example: Sure, have a bar, have a new party type. Let us skill build, earn a leg up on existing careers, and give us the pretty wall decoration and story telling opportunities. Surely that kind of stuff can't be that hard to code, right? Most of it already exists in game, does it not? Surely giving us that can't be THAT much work. So why not throw in some completely new stuff, like the ability for your rich Sims to donate to University research and improve the town itself? Or even just the local schools.
You know how the townies often spawn with Kleptomaniac or Evil traits? What if they implemented a feature that the better the world becomes, the more you can push the current roll system to favor GOOD traits for townies. And of course the way to make the world better is to donate to research which are tied to University. Throw in the charities that already exist as well to fill up that "neighborhood is getting better" meter as well. Could even help you build your Get Famous Reputation, too! I imagine that something like that WOULD take a fair bit of under the hood coding, but would require very little animations. On the surface, it would just require some phone/computer interactions, and text boxes. The biggest hurdle to a features like that is coding and making sure it all works with minimal bugs.
A teaching career would also be nice. I feel like it would be a waste to not have one, either with University or patched into base game. "A la carte" rabbithole classes (much like the ones that already exist in Freelance career, except instead of "teaching" it, you can pay to go) that exist just to raise skill quicker than you would just doing it would be great. Obviously a simple overhaul of base game elementary and high school would be cool - add in a "homeschool" option, and a paid private school option that builds skills and gives a special trait. There's so many things they COULD add with not a whole lot of external animations, object meshes, or what have you.
