One of the most common themes I've seen in anime lie in the 'X-academy' or 'X-High School' where it's a specialized school for one thing or another, usually martial arts/fighting or magic (or science-driven magic, as in some animes...) and they carry lots of other known anime themes in them.
Overall, I think they make great settings, especially the ones that make the effort to fold the history of the school into the world so that it's believable that there's a high school full of arcane nutjobs sitting right in the middle of tokyo or whatnot.
I also like Harry Potter, so there's that going for me.
So... anywho, back on point. I was starting to put together a module-like setting that would seed 'Arcane Academies' throughout Golarion. I know that there's a few here and there, and they're generally full on universities (and there's even that one adventure path featuring one in Korvosa) but I wanted to make a series of magical High Schools that you could run campaigns in.
My initial idea is to make it so that the players all have to take an arcane spellcaster class, starting at level 1 as freshmen at the academy. They go through semesters, etc. and at the beginning of each year they go up a level so that they're 4th by the time they're seniors and graduate. Then you could springboard them into an adventure path or your own campaign.
Each school would be attached to a region. Each school would do their own thing, apart from the other schools, but there's a yearly competition between the schools where they compete to see who's the best that year (and also try to learn anything the other schools may have been developing that they hadn't). the competitions are multiple events that are challenges that must be competed against another with their use of magic. There would be clubs, school activities, student council, special regional holidays, etc.
The school curriculum could be used to help explain why some characters have ranks in some skills and not others.
"What do you mean you don't know what that is?!"
*screech in the background*
"I flunked my natural creatures classes!"
Want to do a particular AP? Put them in the academy near where the AP starts. Or not, and have another reason that leads them there together.
Known Issues:
All AP's start at level 1 from what I've seen.
It requires players to take classes with arcane caster levels.
There already exist magical universities. For adults.
Not everyone wants to play a kid or a student, so how to get them involved.
If anyone has some ideas how to help, or has seen this executed well before, or just wants to chip in their 2 cents, by all means let me know! I am going to test drive this once I get it done satisfactorily to do the Shattered Star AP.
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Check out Redhurst Academy of Magic,(more free Redhurst bits), Unhallowed Halls and Academy of Secrets.
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For a nice investigative adventure set in a neighboring fighter academy check out the haunting of Soldragon Academy
Or how about the 2e Wand of Archeal for an all wizard party?
Pathfinder module Academy of Secrets takes place in a Mage school.
d20 Penumbra Unhallowed Halls is another mystery adventure taking place at wizard school. (Review available here)
Check out this old thread for adventures involving a wizards tower and this younger thread for interesting wizard builds for an all wizard party
Setting wise Headless Hydra Games Mor Aldenn City of Mages should be mentioned. HHG has a nice Mor Aldenn: City of Mages [BUNDLE] available on rpgnow (sadly not on paizo). The idea of their Mor Aldenn mini setting (complete with a tower for each school of magic!) is explained on their site here.
Mor Aldenn is a bit like you propose with several schools iirc.