Should Trade School be 4x Int or Tra along with a chance of Honors, with a duration of 4 years?
A Trade School is a quick way to pick up one desired Skill to round out an aspect of your character that might be neglected by Career opportunities. I'd never seen the Honours note on p.78 before, but it feels a bit unbalancing, given that I'd been okay with the idea of attending Trade School more than once.
There are so few chances to get two Skills in one year that this feels exploitable. I suspect erratum for the Honours, but that the one-year Skill you get is considered a Major to allow fewer wasted rolls when rolling on the second column in the Careers.
Should Training Course be 4x Tra along with a chance of Honors, with a duration of 4 years?
Based on p.62, I've been thinking of C5=Tra as being a situation where educational opportunities require intense effort in a concentrated time. I'd thus not been surprised to see the universal one-year timeframes.
A Training Course, to me, is just a Trade School for non-Int sophonts, one with no chance of rejection upon application.
...is Trade School the Int equivalent to an Apprenticeship?
An Apprenticeship gets one four Skills for only one chance of failure, but requires a decent Tra, as you've no opportunity for Mentoring before you take that risk. Other than that, it's more like ED5, as it occurs before the rest of chargen.
For that matter can someone with Tra Apprentice during ongoing character generation like Edu characters can go back to Universities / Trade Schools?
I think sophonts with Tra can attend Training Courses between Career Terms, but Apprenticeship is the first choice ones makes, either taking it or bypassing.
Also in passing I note the statement on pg 72 that mentoring takes 2 years but the table on pg 100 shows 1 year.
I believe p.72 will prove to be the erratum, but I've little empirical evidence.