Universities in Scotland

There are fifteen universities in Scotland and three other institutions of higher education that have the authority to award academic degrees.

The Scottish university colleges recovered from the disruption of the civil war years and Restoration with a lecture-based curriculum that was able to embrace economics and science, offering a high-quality liberal education to the sons of the nobility and gentry.

In the eighteenth century the universities went from being small and parochial institutions, largely for the training of clergy and lawyers, to major intellectual centres at the forefront of Scottish identity and life, seen as fundamental to democratic principles and the opportunity for social advancement for the talented.

In the first half of the twentieth century Scottish universities fell behind those in England and Europe in terms of participation and investment.

[3] 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.

[9] The five Scottish university colleges recovered from the disruption of the civil war years and Restoration with a lecture-based curriculum that was able to embrace economics and science, offering a high-quality liberal education to the sons of the nobility and gentry.

[12] In the eighteenth century the universities went from being small and parochial institutions, largely for the training of clergy and lawyers, to major intellectual centres at the forefront of Scottish identity and life, seen as fundamental to democratic principles and the opportunity for social advancement for the talented.

[15] The system was flexible and the curriculum became a modern philosophical and scientific one, in keeping with contemporary needs for improvement and progress.

[17] 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[13] and produced leading figures in both the arts and sciences.

[18] In the first half of the twentieth century Scottish universities fell behind those in England and Europe in terms of participation and investment.

[21] There are fifteen universities in Scotland[22] and three other institutions of higher education which have the authority to award academic degrees.

[23] All Scottish universities have the power to award degrees at all levels: undergraduate, taught postgraduate, and doctoral.

[24] University status in Scotland and throughout the United Kingdom today is conferred by the Privy Council which takes advice from the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education.

[29] The table below is a record of each Scottish university's financial data for the 2020–21 financial year as recorded by the Higher Education Statistics Agency:[30] In the 2022–23 academic year, 292,240 students studied at universities or institutes of higher education in Scotland, 228,005 of whom were full-time, 59.0% were female and 40.4% male.

[1] The Scottish Universities Summer School in Physics (SUSSP) was established in 1960 by the four ancient Scottish Universities (Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and St. Andrews) to contribute to the dissemination of advanced knowledge in physics and the formation of contacts among scientists from different countries through the setting up of a series of annual summer schools of the highest international standard.

[38] The below lists the outcome of the latest Research Excellence Framework undertaken in 2021 (the next REF is scheduled for 2028) by the four UK higher education funding bodies.