BACK in another millennium, I was a student at St Andrews University. It feels so long ago it could be the Middle Ages. Think the sinking of the Belgrano and you won’t be far wrong. In those days, it was a quiet, grey little town, clinging to the edge of the North Sea, which made its presence known with scouring winds that were forerunners of cosmetic skin peels.

This was before Prince William ratcheted up the posh quotient of the place. Even so, there was a large cohort of students from public schools, whose voices cut through the air like police sirens. Those of us from comprehensives stayed below the radar, speaking quietly, dressing with less va-va-voom, and sometimes – to our amazement – getting better marks.

From the start of first year, it was obvious that for a few of our classmates, St Andrews was second-best. Hide it though they tried, those who had failed to get into Oxford or Cambridge – or even Durham – looked to St A's as the consolation prize. This was the institution where they could still attain academic and social respectability, even if it didn’t have the kudos of Oxbridge.

Thankfully, with the advent of what’s now being dubbed Stoxbridge, those days are a thing of the past. In recent years, St Andrews has been on the march, closing in on the upper echelon of UK university rankings.

In 2021 it reached No. 1 in the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, the first time since league tables began, 30 years ago, that anywhere other than Oxford or Cambridge came first. Now, after sitting in second place for two years like a petrolhead desperate for a chance to overtake, it has just raced into pole position in the Guardian University Guide 2023.

To be fair, as the compiler of the Guardian league table acknowledged, Oxford and Cambridge weren’t far behind. But behind they were. In the words of the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of St Andrews, Professor Dame Sally Mapstone, “The amalgam of our strengths in the key areas which the Guardian measures has set us narrowly ahead of some of the very best universities in the world. For a small Scottish university to shake the established order repeatedly is a great tribute to everyone who works and studies here.”

Factors that helped secure St Andrews’s stellar position were student satisfaction and attainment, staff-student ratios, and graduate outcomes.

Town and Gown

For many years, early in the autumn (or Michaelmas) term, I’ve been making an annual trip to the university to give a seminar to post-graduates. It has been like taking an audit, as the face of the town, the university and those studying there, has incrementally changed.

Gradually, the St Andrews I used to know has grown flashier. I loved its old, dour self, the empty cobbled streets, and steamy-windowed cafes, the down at heel howfs, where professors had their favourite chairs, and students kept an awed distance, unless invited into their presence.

To my relief, some old haunts remain as they were: olde-worlde departments of history and the bracing expanse of the West Sands beach, made famous in Chariots of Fire. But the place I remember is not merely sepia-tinted but dimly lit as well. The three-day weeks and power cuts of the 1970s were long gone, but there was a murkiness to the place I warmed to.

Since then, it has grown wealthier and glitzier, to the point that on my latest visit, earlier this week, it felt like an oil rig amid the sea, with all its lights blazing. There are upmarket bistros, delis, florists and chi-chi gift shops. In fact, it’s easier to purchase a cashmere cardi than a quiche. The population is also far more diverse. Students in the class I speak to hail from across the globe, from Delhi to Dallas, with North America typically dominant, and Scots in the minority.

The once famous division between Town and Gown seems to have been superceded. To an outside eye, certainly, it is Gown and Gowf. Townies are all but invisible, except behind shop counters or at the wheel of taxis. Meanwhile, the proliferation of retailers and venues devoted to golf is staggering.

The university halls, where I revised for my finals while overlooking the first hole of the Royal & Ancient, has been turned into some of the most expensive real estate in Scotland. Apartments here sell for prices in the millions. A few yards away is a restaurant serving caviar as a starter for £180, where oysters are £4.50 a slurp and a two-course dinner runs to £78 before drinks.

The Herald:

None of this, of course, impinges directly on the university experience. And yet the palpable air of affluence and confidence finds its way into the academic realm. There were always the haves and the have-nots in every lecture hall – and sometimes the lecturers themselves were considerably less well-heeled than their students – but I wonder how today’s hard-up feel, surrounded by so much money?

For the purposes of studying, you could hardly design a setting more conducive to focussing on work. Of course, students coming to St A's are already self-selecting to an extent, already likely to be bookish and studious. Not only are they less interested in a city’s distractions, but they are drawn by the traditions and heritage of a town that reeks of history: where there are reminders underfoot in the cobblestones of where martyrs were burned, or plaques commemorating such occasions as when Benjamin Franklin was awarded an honorary doctorate.

Personally, I loathed wearing the red flannel gown which is St Andrews’s hallmark, and repurposed it as a blanket. Yet the upside of a plethora of old customs is the sense of community it fosters. It’s hard to be lonely in a close-knit fraternity like this. And when problems arise, they are more quickly spotted and addressed.

Now, despite its dramatic transformation into a sophisticated tourist and property honeypot, it is reassuring to know that the essence of St Andrews has not changed. It was always immensely proud and protective of its academic credentials, and students responded to that. To judge by the class I spoke to on Monday, they might be even more serious-minded and eager to learn than when the Sun headline screamed Gotcha! If that really is so, then it they have landed in the best place.