New principal of St Andrews University Professor Sally Mapstone targets more students from poor backgrounds

St Andrews, which was founded in 1413, currently has the highest proportion of students from private schools in Scotland at some 40 per cent and in 2011 was attacked for recruiting just 13 students from the most deprived backgrounds.

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Since then the Scottish Government has made it a priority for universities to improve access by setting targets, but former principal Professor Louise Richardson questioned the policy stating: "I understand the need for access, but we don't need the government to tell us."

In a marked shift in tone Professor Mapstone said: “We must become more clearly inclusive. This is not something around the edges of what we are as a university. It is central to how we are and to how we attract the best and the brightest to us at all levels and how we retain them."

As a first step towards becoming more "open and diverse" Professor Mapstone said the university would open its first "proper" nursery from February next year with 40 places available to children of staff and student parents.

Professor Mapstone went on to warn that current funding uncertainties and the pressures of Brexit and visa restrictions on international students meant the university had to explore "all credible funding options" to secure its future.

She said: “As a university approximately 18 per cent of St Andrews’ funding, outside research funding, is provided from the Scottish Government.

"We are grateful for that funding and entirely accept our accountability in terms of it, but that figure, the uncertainties of Brexit, and the ongoing governance changes in higher education across the UK must raise questions about the funding model for this university over the next decades.

“As principal I see it as my responsibility to explore all the credible funding options that are available to us and I also intend to continue... with our colleagues in the development office and with the engagement of our staff, students and alumni, to fundraise to build the university’s endowment and to secure scholarships, posts and key capital projects."

Professor Mapstone, the university's second female leader, also has pledged that the university will play a leading role in public debate as the UK negotiates an exit from the European Union.

She also highlighted the importance of international students at a time when the Westminster Government is introducing visa restrictions.

“As I speak to you against the dramatic background of a world politics that shifts around us on almost a daily basis, there is still much to argue for within the Brexit negotiations in the key areas of staff and student mobility, research funding and fee status," she said.

Describing the university’s relationship with Europe as “fundamental to our origins” Professor Mapstone warned that any weakening of the intellectual, cultural, and political contact and collaboration with the EU would lead to “an impoverishment way beyond the financial”.

Some 21 per cent of St Andrews research funding over the last five years has come from the EU and 22 per cent of academic staff and 31 per cent of research staff are from EU countries.

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She said: “When there is good evidence that international students contribute profoundly to our cultural mix and our economy, current suggestions that those numbers should be reduced seem perverse in the extreme."

Professor Mapstone has spent spent entire academic career at Oxford University where she read English Language and Literature and where she gained her doctorate on Older Scots literature.

Her research deals with literature in Scots and in Latin before 1707, with political literature, and with book history. She is Honorary President of the Scottish Text Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, and a Fellow of the English Association.