From The Sunday Times
September 20, 2008
St Andrews earns a high five Scotland’s leading university is now the main rival in the UK to Oxford and Cambridge
Reports Sue Leonard
Few universities can rival St Andrews. This 600-year-old institution offers students everything they could want and a lot more besides. Not only does it provide an abundance of history and tradition along with a first-class modern education taught by academics at the top of their field, it does so in a beautiful location on the east coast of Scotland.
St Andrews has finished fifth in our league table this year, achieving the highest-ever ranking for a Scottish institution and becoming at the same time the highest-placed multi-faculty university behind Oxbridge.
In so doing, it secures our award of Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year for the second time in three years, beating The Robert Gordon University, the runner-up. St Andrews last won the accolade in 2006 and was also our UK University of the Year in 2002 and runner-up last year.
When Dr Brian Lang retires as principal and vice-chancellor later this year, he will do so with the satisfaction that he leaves St Andrews ranked the fifth best university in Britain.
The university also gets outstanding results for student satisfaction, coming sixth overall in the national student survey, using a rigorous Sunday Times analysis of the results. Among multi-faculty institutions only Cambridge, Loughborough and Exeter finish ahead of it.
“We are very, very pleased,” says Lang, who compares Scotland’s first and the UK’s third oldest university to a Morgan sports car. “It looks very old-fashioned on the outside but when you lift the bonnet it is high-tech,” he says. “It is not very comfortable. It rattles, but it gets you there, and it gets you there in some style.”
The discomfort he talks about has nothing to do with the state of any of the buildings. Indeed, Lang has spent more than £100m upgrading the estate during his eight-year tenure, including new student accommodation with en-suite facilities. He is talking about the academic rigour that draws the very brightest from across the UK and around the world and requires them to focus seriously on their studies.
“People have to work hard,” he says. “It is a challenge. It is not all parties and nightclubs.” In fact there are no nightclubs, although St Andrews apparently has more pubs per square foot than anywhere else in Britain.
“We have a real concern to make sure students have a worthwhile and memorable time here,” adds Lang.
With a projected dropout rate of just 5.5%, well below funding council expectations, the university appears to be achieving this aim.
St Andrews is one of Europe’s most research-intensive seats of learning — more than a quarter of its turnover of £125m comes from research grants and contracts. It is the top-rated university in Scotland for research and teaching quality, and is consistently ranked among the UK top 10.
Lang expects it to maintain its track record when the latest research assessments are published in December.
Preserving all the best traditions of the ancient Scottish universities, St Andrews believes in offering a broadly-based education and a wide choice of degree subjects ranging from English and theology to more modern selections such as film studies and sustainable development. The modular degree structure — with its in-built flexibility, particularly in the first two years of study — allows students to enter on one degree programme and graduate in an entirely different one.
With courses normally lasting four years, students usually take at least three subjects in each of their first two years before specialising. The exception is the innovative medical degree, where they do a BSc honours in medicine for three years before transferring to one of five medical schools (four of which are in Scotland) for their clinical training.
Three years after Prince William graduated with a 2:1 degree in geography, St Andrews remains one of the most sought-after destinations for prospective students from the UK, Europe and overseas, in spite of its tough entry requirements — asking rates range from ABBB to AAAAB at Higher and ABB to AAA at A-level.
“We look Oxford and Cambridge in the eye,” says Lang.
As former alumni such as Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister, author Fay Weldon and actress Siobhan Redmond would no doubt testify, the thrill of being accepted at St Andrews is only surpassed by the experience of being there, with students and staff making up half the 18,000 population in term-time. A third of scholars come from overseas, adding a cosmopolitan feel to this small city and, although it is increasingly popular with public schools, the university successfully attracts candidates from nontraditional backgrounds, adding further diversity.
They may work hard, but students know how to let their hair down. When they are not poring over their books they can be found on the nearby beaches, teeing off on one of St Andrews’ seven links courses, in one of the many bars or taking part in other sports or university activities. The facilities include tennis courts, a running track, cricket nets and an Astroturf pitch. St Andrews also boasts 110 student societies — more than any other university in Scotland — which range from debating and hill walking to tiddlywinks and even a Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer Appreciation Society.
St Andrews, founded in 1413, very much looks to the future. Capital investment is continuing with a new school for medicine and the sciences, the refurbishment of the main library and new student accommodation.
The future may also include developing a St Andrews abroad. “One possible project we have in mind is a satellite elsewhere,” says Lang. “There is an exciting future for St Andrews,” he adds, admitting he will miss the university when he leaves.
Now that a significant proportion of young people go on to get degrees, what sets the best universities apart from the rest is their ability to turn out employable students. Few do it better than the Robert Gordon University (RGU), our Scottish University of the Year runner-up, situated further up the coast in Aberdeen, the wealthy and cosmopolitan European capital of the oil industry.
RGU graduates are among the most sought-after in the UK. Our award celebrates the achievement of this very modern institution of not only consistently being one of the best in the UK for graduate recruitment — just 2% of students are unemployed six months after finishing — but also in gaining top graduate-level jobs (87.1%). That’s on a par with Cambridge, with only the London School of Economics and Imperial College ahead of them.
At RGU, degree programmes are designed to offer a combination of academic study and practical experience, with virtually all involving some form of work placement.
“It is something that the university has worked on for many years,” says Mike Pittilo, the principal and vice-chancellor. “We make sure there is employer engagement with every single course.”
Many courses have people lecturing who are in practice, and degree programmes are under constant review to keep them relevant. You don’t get good results without good teaching. “We are not a research-intensive university,” says Pittilo. “We specialise in good teaching. Most of our staff are not off at research conferences or meetings across the globe.”
While it can’t compete with the long history of the ancient universities, RGU can do heritage. The name Robert Gordon has been synonymous with education in Aberdeen since 1750, when the eponymous merchant trader established a residential school for boys to equip them with skills, and the university was born 16 years ago out of the former Robert Gordon Institute of Technology. Almost 260 years on, RGU remains true to its founding spirit with an international reputation for providing high-quality education linked to business needs.
Of all the industries it is linked with, oil and gas is probably one of the most significant. From drilling and well engineering to oil and gas law, RGU has built a reputation for educating tomorrow’s energy experts as well as offering specialised training to those already in the industry. Largely based around its Energy Centre, launched in 2005, its courses include MScs in subsea engineering and asset integrity management. Its graduates work all over the world and there are plans to expand into renewable energy.
Firms not only get involved with course design, they also offer generous sponsorship. In addition, RGU tries to give every student some experience of entrepreneurship. “We feel that will enhance employability,” says Pittilo.
A large number of RGU programmes are available part-time and the university recently launched a virtual learning environment to deliver online courses and support to its students in Aberdeen and around the globe.
RGU is planning to spend £150m over the next five years to concentrate its facilities on a single site. Currently split between a location on the River Dee and the city centre, it plans to provide the best riverside campus in Europe by extending south at Garthdee. The move will help RGU to deliver truly interdisciplinary programmes to students undertaking different specialities at each site.
“Industry sees that as important and it is important that we are able to do it,” says Pittilo, who also believes it is beneficial for students to mix with those outside their chosen field.
Garthdee’s already impressive facilities include the Norman Foster-designed business school, an £11m sports centre with a 25-metre pool and two libraries.
“Making sure that the student experience is good is very important,” says Pittilo. “We have invested heavily in the quality of the estate, and we would like them to think that they are coming into a very nice environment.”
RGU is now ranked 62nd overall in the UK (up three places to its highest-ever listing) and is the leading modern university in Scotland. It offers a wide variety of degrees ranging from law to offshore engineering to fashion design to forensic science, and its MSc in intelligent biometric security systems is the first of its type in the UK.
With its very impressive sports facilities RGU has begun its own enterprise to become the university of choice for elite athletes.
Last year, 18 students were awarded sports scholarships funded by Technip, the oil and gas firm. Current talents include golfer Laura Murray and tennis player Claire Birnie. Olympic swimmer Hannah Miley starts her degree course this month.
Given its fairly remote location, students come predominantly from the northeast of Scotland, with 16% from overseas. An alliance with Aberdeen College offers access courses which can lead to an an honours degree at RGU, and about one-third of students come through this route.
The 13,000 students make up almost 6% of the population of Scotland’s third largest city. “Students like to come here,” says Pittilo. “Parents like to come here. It is safe. The quality of life is incredibly good. You can be on the beach in the morning and in the Cairngorms National Park in the afternoon.” Aberdeen also has much to offer culturally, including 11 festivals and an impressive range of art galleries and museums.
Loughborough University is the UK University of the Year for 2008-9. Shortlisted three times for the award in the past decade, it wins the prize after an outstanding year in which it finished second to only the private University of Buckingham for student satisfaction. Recent teaching assessments place it second behind Cambridge for teaching excellence and its athletes broke 15 national records and won two medals at the Beijing Olympics, making up a 48-strong contingent at the Games, competing mostly for Great Britain.
Imperial College London, one of the world’s leading institutions for the study of science and engineering, was runner-up for the UK title, with Southampton, Sheffield and Aston shortlisted. A fuller feature on these institutions can be found at timesonline.co.uk/universityguide.