Edinburgh Uni must stop snobbery from Saltburn-esque toff students

They include outreach programmes in primaries and secondaries, contextualised admissions (typically a grade or two lower than advertised in the entry requirements), summer camps, as well as ongoing support throughout their time in university and on into the workplace.

As a result of these initiatives, according to the university’s statistics, more than 10% of Edinburgh’s 2022 intake of new undergraduates came from one of Scotland’s 20% most deprived areas.

The university also increased its offer rate to applicants from those areas from 24% in 2016 to 47.7 % in 2022.

All this is laudable but it’s not the whole story. Because that 10+% is far outweighed by the 40% of Edinburgh University students who were privately educated, and the 70% who are from England, the rest of the UK, and abroad.

“What’s wrong with that?” you might ask. “Isn’t diversity a good thing?” And, up to a point, you would be right. No-one wants universities to be a homogeneous slice of Scottish life. The whole point of going there is to have your world expanded.

But what if all of that opening yourself up to other lifestyles and ideas only operates in one direction? What if the WP students, eager to absorb new perspectives, are met with condescension and derision?

Edinburgh University

Noses turned up

This seems to be what is happening at Edinburgh, with working-class Scots reporting an obsession with their accents and intense questioning over which school they attended (followed by a turning up of the nose if it turns out to be a bog-standard comprehensive).

The problem is not new. One of my friends, a state school-educated Dundonian, who studied English at Edinburgh in the 1980s, attributes her “chippiness” to the “unconscious [class] apartheid” she experienced there.

Back then, she might have expected such discrimination to have been eradicated by 2024. But no, the divide is now so great Edinburgh University recently felt the need to tell overprivileged students to cease their snobbery, and to advise underprivileged students how to deal with “socio-economic microaggressions” (by which it meant class-based ridicule).

The move came after the newly-formed Scottish Social Mobility Society said the mockery was so intense it was discouraging some working-class students from Scotland and the north of England from speaking out in seminars or tutorials.

The group said it had already received more than 200 reports of incidents

where state school-educated students were put down or patronised because of the way they talked and/or their backgrounds.

A law student said one lecturer had referred to private schools as “proper” schools, while another had laughed at a girl who was struggling to meet a deadline because she was working to pay her rent, then asked why her parents couldn’t send her the money.

For some people, this is all just a big joke.

Earlier this year, when a video about student fashion provoked the comment “Not a Scot in sight”, the Edinburgh Tab – an independent student news website – replied: “As God intended.” When someone took issue with this, they were told to “bore off”.

But the reason it hits such a nerve is because it demonstrates a wilful ignorance of the extent to which ordinary Scots, and particularly WP students, are being marginalised in their own backyard.

The overdominance of rUK and international students is a dividend of free tuition.

Because the universities receive £7,610 in public funding for every Scottish student, the Scottish Government has to cap the numbers each university is allowed to take.

And because the money the Scottish Government gives universities only covers 85% of the cost of teaching and supporting their domestic intake, the universities depend on expanding the number of rUK and, more particularly, international students.

International student numbers have increased dramatically in Scotland

Huge hurdles

FOR WP students, the hurdles are huge. Many will come from backgrounds where higher education is not the norm. Their hinterlands may be more limited: fewer books in their homes, fewer skiing trips to the Alps, fewer visits to art galleries. They may have attended schools which do not offer Advanced Highers (something universities say eases the transition into first year). They may work up to 35 hours a week to pay for their living expenses (and be forced to skip lectures as a result).

In Edinburgh, the plight of WP students is exacerbated by soaring accommodation costs. Priced out of the city, many less-affluent students commute long distances.

These students know – because it is well publicised – that gaining their degree brings no guarantee of employment. Just last week, for example, a study showed – to no-one’s great surprise – that the upper echelons of the UK’s art scene are dominated by the privately educated.

The Sutton Trust found more than two-fifths of top classical musicians, and more than one-third of Bafta-nominated actors, had gone to an independent school (the UK average is just 7%).

In other occupations, such as law, the length of time some WP students take to get their degrees (because of fails and resits, and time out to accrue more funds) makes it harder to secure highly competitive traineeships.

While Edinburgh is eager to advertise its percentage of WP students, figures on the widening participation drop-out rate are more difficult to access. I contacted the university and was told it doesn’t publish them.

But sources I have spoken to say it’s rising, with WP students also less likely to find skilled employment or to go on to do a master’s or a PhD.

This is mostly financial, but there’s a cultural overlap. Scots and WP students who aren’t in the city, or are working long hours, are less likely to socialise with other students and forge those networks that are second nature to their wealthier counterparts.

Moreover, if their wealthier counterparts are constantly undermining them, if they feel an internalised sense of shame, a sense of not being good enough, then they are even less likely to make the effort. If they carve time from a busy day to prepare for a tutorial only to be told to repeat themselves, or to be ridiculed for a gap in their knowledge, then who can blame them if, at some point they think: this really isn’t worth the hassle?

Students should not feel an internalised sense of shame, says Dani

Inequalities

EDINBURGH University appears to be doing what it can to support WP students, pastorally, academically, financially. It cannot unilaterally overcome all of the UK’s structural inequalities, nor can it do anything about the caps on Scottish student numbers. It has already agreed to give staff training on accent bias.

But it can and must address those Saltburn-esque toffs who dismiss those from north of the Border as provincial hicks, or who think they are superior because their parents are loaded.

The irony is that, in overcoming structural barriers, in being hungry for learning and for a way of life that hasn’t been handed to them on a plate, the WP students have achieved so much more than those who glided into university and now sit in judgment. They have a much broader perspective on life, and an ability to juggle that would be the envy of many a Mound entertainer.

It is crucial for the university and for society that we harness their talents, that we do not let them be swept away on a tide of lesser people’s contempt.