Applied A-Z of World Building

So CampNaNo is approaching in June and many members of my Writing Group are looking forward to it. I have two approaches to NaNoWriMo:

1. I dig out an old story that I've never quite got around to writing: or
2. I do the opposite and start on November the 1st with nothing and fly by the seat of my pants through the thirty days of November.

This June I've decided to take a different approach. My fellow writing group member and friend, Angeline Trevena, wrote an awesome series of blogs for the A-Z writing challenge on World Building. Because I am a maniac I've decided to follow those A-Z challenges approximately one a day until the 1st of June when I will attempt to come up with some characters and drop them into the world to find a story.

So things to note:

1. The blog doesn't advise tackling things in this order. I'm the nutter who decided to do that.
2. This is a completely blank world. I have not written anything on it yet, no characters, no plots.
3. I'm going to attempt to minimise leakage from the topics so I design only around the topic, there probably will be some leakage as, for instance with day one, I can't design the academic world without knowing something of the magic system and the cultural areas.
4. There are, when I started this, 24 days left until June the 1st and 26 letters of the alphabet so I will have to do a couple of days with two letters of the alphabet. 

And so to A... for Academia.