Back in the 1980s far fewer students went on to university. For some reason we closed down the polytechnics and promoted university for all, so the cost of providing grants for all has increased. There was a scholarship scheme for engineers which started the year after my course started, so I was sadly not eligible. It was something like £500 which would have been nice for a student in the 90s! Scholarships sound a great idea! There were industrial scholarships in the 80s, where a company would pay a student to go through university on the basis that the student would work for the company for a certain amount of time afterwards. You'd have to pass through an interview process just as for any other job you'd apply for. My engineering course was four years. With top universities wanting to charge £9000 per annum that course would cost £36,000 plus room, food and other fees. My annual charge for these was about £2000 back in the 90s. It would have increased since, so an engineering student without sponsorship would end up in a lot of debt a the end of the course.

Never-the-less - a very high bandwidth AFSK signal - or just a pulsed signal - would be quite effective. But then that's what we're doing down optic fibres at the moment. We use pulses with the fibres (or did back in the 90s anyway). Some issues with splurging due to different path lengths even in a graduated fibre, but generally good bandwidth.