Max O'Rell

Higher Education in Scotland.—The Universities.—How they differ from English Universities.—Is he a Gentleman?—Scholarships.—A Visit to the University of Aberdeen.—English Prejudice against Scotch Universities.

cotland boasts four universities: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and St. Andrew's.

These four great centres of learning constitute the system of Higher Education in Scotland.

These universities differ essentially from the two great English ones, first because men go there to work, secondly because they are open to the people. A peasant's son, like Thomas Carlyle for instance, can go there without fearing that his fellow-students will avoid him because he comes of a poor family.

When a new student arrives at Oxford or Cambridge, the others do not enquire whether he is a clever fellow or a dunce; what they want to know is what his father is, and who was his grandfather. It is only after obtaining a satisfactory answer to these questions that they associate with the new comer.

In Scotland, as in France, every man who is well educated and has the manners of good society is a gentleman. The son of a peasant possessing these is received everywhere.

Each Scotch university offers from fifty to eighty scholarships, varying in value from £8 to £70. These sums, paid annually to the winners of the scholarships, help them to live while they are devoting their time to study.

The most admirable thing about high education in Scotland is that it is put within the reach of all, and is not, as it is in England, a sugarplum held so high as to be often unattainable.

The result is that every intelligent young Scotchman may aim at entering a profession. There may be in this a little danger to the commerce and agriculture of the country. However, these young men do not encumber Scotland; their studies fit them for a lucrative career, which they often go and seek in the Colonies. An Australian friend told me recently that more than half the doctors in Victoria were Scotchmen.

I have spoken, in a previous chapter, of the privations that Scotch undergraduates will often impose upon themselves. Nothing is more remarkable than the sustained application and indefatigable will which they bring to bear on their studies. Nothing distracts them from their aim; they never lose sight of the diploma that will be their bread-winner. I have seen them at work, these Scotch students. I visited the School of Medicine at Aberdeen University, in the company of Dr. John Struthers, the learned Professor of Anatomy. I was struck, in passing through the dissecting room, to see about fifty students, without any professor, so absorbed in their work that not one of them lifted his head as we passed.

In France it would have been very different: every eye would have been turned to the stranger, and all through the room there would have been a whisper of Qui Ça? And then remarks and jokes would have run rife.

The English are very prejudiced against the Scotch universities.

How many times have I been told in England that young fellows, who fail to obtain their medical diploma in England, could get them easily enough in Scotland. Nothing is more absurd; if ever it was so, it was a long while ago. In these days, the examinations of the four Scotch faculties are quite as severe and quite as difficult as the English ones.

Whenever there is a vacant mastership in an English public school advertised in the newspapers, it is always stated that the candidates for the post must be graduates of one of the universities of the United Kingdom. This does not alter the fact that candidates, who are not Oxford or Cambridge men, have no chance of being elected. I have known Scotch masters in the public schools. They had studied at Edinburgh, Glasgow, or Aberdeen, but had gone to Oxford or Cambridge to reside, in order to obtain an English degree.

Why is this?

Simply because these two great English universities give their old scholars an importance, not necessarily literary or scientific, but social; they stamp them gentlemen.

Whatever the English may say, the universities of old Scotland are the nurseries of learned and useful citizens. Of this they would soon be convinced if they would visit those great centres of intellectual activity. But this is just what they avoid doing. When the English go to Scotland, it is to fish or to shoot in the Highlands, and whatever they may get in the way of game or fish, they do not pick up much serious information on the subject of Scotland.