I've noticed something odd with the effective crew level of my ships, and it's dependency of the order in which I place those ships in the fleet window. I know that the further to the top left I place ships, the higher that ship's priority for getting high level crew members. But I also read in the manual that you don't need to have an all-elite crew to get an effective elite level, and that once a ship has enough high level crew to get the appropriate level, any further high level crew members go to the next ship. And that's where things get weird.
On multiple occasions, if I place a big ship with lots of crew in the top left corner and the smaller ships in the other square, only the big ship gets and effective crew level of elite, the others get veteran. But if I place the big ship behind the smaller ships in the fleet order, all ships get elite level, including the big one. For example, I currently have 84 elites, 375 veterans, 215 regulars, and 113 marines in my cargo bay. If I place a paragon-class battleship in the top left corner and a Gemini Destroyer to the right of that, only the paragon is elite, the gemini is veteran. If I swap the two, both ships have an effective level of elite.
So, either the reported effective crew level is wrong, or whatever function determines how many high level crew members are neccesary and how many can be passed on to the next ship on the list. I think it's the latter, because my travel speed is also affected. If I use a fleet composition with the order Paragon-Hammerhead-Gemini-bunch of fighters, with the above quoted crew numbers, only my Paragon is elite and my travel speed is 143, if I use Hammerhead-Paragon-Gemini-bunch of fighters, Hammerhead and Paragon are both elite, and my travel speed is 144.