Single species crews on Federation starships

[Orcus]

Starfleet Acadamy does have scientific and medical divisions but I think people with degree level qualifications can simply take officer training. Isn't that also the case in the present day navy? I thought navy engineers were usually trained at outside institutions?

Indeed our own navy is like that here, down under. Many years ago I applied to the navy where I qualified for officer training. After waiting for, what I thought, was an ice age I joined the army instead as an infantryman. Idiot!

I now find that I am still qualified to join the navy as an officer as an administrator/instructor. Though nowadays I've reached a point in my life where I'm no longer interested in serving in the forces...

 

[Timo]

I thought Spock was a graduate of the Vulcan Science Academy?

It was something of a story point in "Journey to Babel", and later in the newest movie, that Spock could have entered the VSA but chose not to, and instead enrolled in Starfleet.

McCoy was definitely in private practice before joining Starfleet; it's why he refers to himself as 'an old country doctor'.

Possibly; or then it's just his self-ironic joke. In the new movie, McCoy seems to join Starfleet at a somewhat advanced age, after a bitter divorce, but we still don't learn if he was a doctor during his marriage already, or merely became one in Starfleet. And those parts of the movie are of dubious historical worth anyway, as they happen after the timeline is mucked up by time travel.

There's no hard data on when McCoy joined Starfleet. If it happened early on, his (sparsely) documented early medical exploits would be due to Starfleet medical training; if it happened later on, then he did receive civilian medical education first.

I was just guessing with Scotty since he mentions that he worked on mining vessels for a while, I assumed he joined Starfleet after that.

That seems to be established. But we don't know if Scotty has any sort of academic training.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SilentP]

Possibly; or then it's just his self-ironic joke. In the new movie, McCoy seems to join Starfleet at a somewhat advanced age, after a bitter divorce, but we still don't learn if he was a doctor during his marriage already, or merely became one in Starfleet.

Actually he was a doctor befire he joined Starfleet, since the officer 'coaxing' him out of the toilet threatened to get a doctor, and he yelled back that he was one.

 

[Timo]

Oh, right. That settles it for the STXI universe, then...

Whether the same is true of the preceding timeline is unclear, since McCoy would have made his career choice only after 2233 when Nero altered the timeline. Probably the other McCoy could have studied medicine in Starfleet, too, considering how Dr. Bashir seemed to have become a Dr. without spending too much time in a civilian institution beforehand...

Timo Saloniemi