What if the Collegium wasn't a pre-requisite to becoming a guild novice, but was something that's done alongside being a guild novice? That is, a novice is a part of the Collegium and the guild, and can ask questions on both parts. This removes the whole "rush" to get through the Collegium in order to get into the guild, because they are already a part of it. They can do guild advancement tasks to graduate through their guild novicehood early, while still being a part of the Collegium for more general questions / learning about the Commune/City.

The issue the Collegiums were supposed to solve was the "There's nobody on my GNT to ask for help from," but the Collegium exists for that. It also gives people a thing to do, but a lot of the time they feel "forced" to do it ahead of time because, well, they've got no real guild ties or ability to speak directly with their guild for more focused/appropriate things to do "right away" (like learning lessons).

The guild novice time would need to be extended again, and maybe the Collegium time could be as well so that they aren't dumped out of a helpful environment before they're ready. Only the guild novice time would actually be slowing down their wait to graduation, though, as the Collegium moves off from being a "main focus" and into a "Hey, this is a really cool place for you to get help / assistance / do some fun quests."

What he said.

Xavius wins the thread.

I agree, especially because only people appointed as Professors can help the newbies.

Everyone can talk on CGT, just Professors and Chancellors can access CGTS. Which is never used anyway... not by Celest people, anyway.

Hm, I swear on my alt I couldn't see it.

Then again I might have turned it off.

In any case, I still think it's better if they're considered guild novices and just in the collegium on the side.

I wish they could speak on GNT as well as CGT. Not sure if they would think that confusing or not, though. I don't know.