page_title: History of universities in Scotland
section_title: Twentieth century to the present
hierarchical_section_title: History of universities in Scotland / History / Modern era / Twentieth century to the present
caption_attribution_description: English: The University of Stirling was founded in 1967, and was still growing in 1990. This is the campus, seen from the Wallace Tower.
context_page_description: The history of universities in Scotland includes the development of all universities and university colleges in Scotland, between their foundation between the fifteenth century and the present day. Until the fifteenth century, those Scots who wished to attend university had to travel to England, or to the Continent. This situation was transformed by the founding of St John's College, St Andrews in 1418 by Henry Wardlaw, bishop of St. Andrews. St Salvator's College was added to St. Andrews in 1450. The other great bishoprics followed, with the University of Glasgow being founded in 1451 and King's College, Aberdeen in 1495. Initially, these institutions were designed for the training of clerics, but they would increasingly be used by laymen. International contacts helped integrate Scotland into a wider European scholarly world and would be one of the most important ways in which the new ideas of humanism were brought into Scottish intellectual life in the sixteenth century.
  St Leonard's College was founded in St Andrews in 1512 and St John's College as St Mary's College, St Andrews was re-founded in 1538, as a humanist academy for the training of clerics.
context_section_description: From 1901 large numbers of students received bursaries from the Carnegie Trust. By 1913 there were 7,776 students in Scottish universities. Of these 1,751 (23 per cent) were women. By the mid-1920s it had risen to a third. It then fell to 25–7 per cent in the 1930s as opportunities in school teaching, virtually the only careers outlet for female graduates in arts and sciences, decreased. No woman was appointed to a Scottish professorship until after 1945. The fall in numbers was most acute among women students, but it was part of a general trend. In the first half of the twentieth century Scottish universities fell behind those in England and Europe in terms of participation and investment. The decline of traditional industries between the wars undermined recruitment to subjects in which Scotland had been traditionally strong, such as science and engineering. English universities increased the numbers of students registered between 1924 and 1927 by 19 per cent, but in Scotland the number of full-time students fell from 10,400 in 1924 to 9,900 in 1937. In the same period, while expenditure in English universities rose by 90 per cent, in Scotland the increase was less than a third of that figure.
  Before the First World War relationships between male and female students tended to be very formal, but in the inter-war years there was an increase in social activities, such as dance halls, cinemas, cafes and public houses. From the 1920s much drunken and high spirited activity was diverted into the annual charity gala or rag. Male centred activities included the Student's Union, Rugby Club and Officers' Training Corps. Women had their own unions and athletics clubs. Universities remained largely non-residential, although a few women's halls of residence were created, most not owned by the universities.
  After the Robbins Report of 1963 there was a rapid expansion in higher education in Scotland. By the end of the decade the number of Scottish Universities had doubled. The University of Dundee was demerged from St. Andrews, Strathclyde and Heriot-Watt developing from technical colleges and the Stirling was begun as a completely new university on a greenfield site in 1966. From the 1970s the government preferred to expand higher education in the non-university sector of educational and technical colleges, which were cheaper because they undertook little research. By the late 1980s roughly half of students in higher education were in colleges. In 1992, under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, the distinction between universities and colleges was removed. This created new universities at Abertay, Glasgow Caledonian, Napier, Paisley and Robert Gordon. Despite the expansion the number of male students experienced a downturn in growth from 1971 to 1990. The growth in female student numbers was much larger and continued until, by 1999 and 2000, the numbers of women students exceeded male students for the first time.
  After devolution, in 1999 the new Scottish Executive set up an Education Department and an Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning Department, which together took over its functions. One of the major diversions from practice in England, possible because of devolution, was the abolition of student tuition fees in 1999, instead retaining a system of means-tested student grants. In 2001 the University of the Highlands and Islands was created by a federation of 13 colleges and research institutions in the Highlands and Islands in 2001 and which gained full university status in 2011.
  In 2008–09, approximately 231,000 students studied at universities or institutes of higher education in Scotland, of which 56 per cent were female and 44 per cent male.
caption: The purpose-built modern buildings of the University of Stirling
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