page_title: History of universities in Scotland
section_title: Nineteenth century
hierarchical_section_title: History of universities in Scotland / History / Modern era / Nineteenth century
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)
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: At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Scotland's five university colleges had about 3,000 students between them. They had no entrance exam, students typically entered at ages of 15 or 16, attended for as little as two years, chose which lectures to attend and left without qualifications. Although Scottish universities had gained a formidable reputation in the eighteenth century, the curriculum was dominated by divinity and the law and there was a concerted attempt to modernise the curriculum, particularly by introducing degrees in the physical sciences and the need to reform the system to meet the needs of the emerging middle classes and the professions. The result was two commissions of inquiry in 1826 and 1876 and reforming acts of parliament in 1858 and 1889.
  The curriculum and system of graduation were reformed. Entrance examinations that were equivalent to the School Leaving Certificate were introduced and average ages of entry rose to 17 or 18. Standard patterns of graduation in the arts curriculum offered three-year ordinary and four-year honours degrees. There was resistance among professors, particularly among chairs of divinity and classics, to the introduction of new subjects, especially the physical sciences. The crown established Regius chairs, all in the sciences, including medicine, chemistry, natural history and botany. The chair of Engineering at Glasgow was the first of its kind in the world. By the 1870s the physical sciences were well established in Scottish universities, whereas in England the battle to modernise the curriculum would not be complete until the end of the century. The new separate science faculties were able to move away from the compulsory Latin, Greek and philosophy of the old MA curriculum. Under the commissions, all the universities were restructured. They were given Courts, which included external members and who oversaw the finances of the institution. Students' Representative Councils were founded in 1884 and ratified under the 1889 act. Under this act new arts subjects were established, with chairs in Modern History, French, German and Political Economy.
  The University of St Andrews was at a low point in its fortunes in the early part of the century. It was restructured by commissioners appointed under the 1858 act and began a revival. It pioneered the admission of women to Scottish universities, creating the Lady Literate in Arts (LLA) in 1882, which proved highly popular. From 1892 Scottish universities could all admit and graduate women, with St Andrews the first to do so, and the numbers of women at Scottish universities steadily increased from this point until the early twentieth century. A new college of St Andrews was opened in the thriving burgh of Dundee in 1883, allowing the university to teach sciences and open a medical school. The University of Glasgow became a leader in British higher education by providing the educational needs of youth from the urban and commercial classes. It moved from the city centre to a new set of grand neo-Gothic buildings, paid for largely by public subscription, at Gilmorehill in 1870. The two colleges at Aberdeen were considered too small to be viable and they were restructured as the University of Aberdeen in 1860. Marischal College was rebuilt in the Gothic style from 1900. Unlike the other Medieval and ecclesiastical foundations, because the University of Edinburgh was a civic college it was relatively poor. In 1858 it was taken out of the care of the city and established on a similar basis to the other ancient universities.
  The result of these reforms was a revitalisation of the Scottish university system, which expanded to 6,254 students by the end of the century and produced leading figures in both the arts and sciences. The chair of Engineering at Glasgow became highly distinguished under its second incumbent William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–72), who held the position from 1859 to 1872 and became the leading figure in heat engines and founder president of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland. Thomas 
caption: Lord Kelvin by Hubert von Herkomer
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