If I'm not mistaken you get heros faster once you find the academy. Apart from that you can colonize the system (vanilla or without the nakalim) to get experience points for all heros per turn. I never conquered the system with the nakalim dlc though. That said the academy's role is widely enhanced with the latest dlc. Since it acts like a new faction and gives you the opportunity to bid for certain diplomatic roles.

GTI wrote:

Nakalim is the only DLC I don't own so in my case, the Academy is not an empire. I read some comments that said the Awakening DLC turns the academy into an extreme powerful faction which breaks the strategy of the game.

Perhaps it's a better gaming experience, if you are a more experienced ES2 gamer. Not sure about. Anyway, you can adjust the academy difficult level in (new) game settings. Additionally there are mods out there in Steam workshop what deal with Awakening DLC. Perhaps this link is of use for you: Fandom Wiki Academy

By the way. The "university" you write about is the academy embassy, what you can build in one of your systems: Xenology - Academy Embassy

Keep in mind, the academy (embassy) boni stack. You get stacking boni from owning academy system and conquering other factions systems, what have build the academy, too.

Thank you guys!