St Andrews is the oldest university in Scotland, and third oldest in the UK behind the University of Oxford and Cambridge. Now for the first time a university other than Oxford or Cambridge has won both prestigious higher education league tables in the same year. 

The two tables came from the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, which will be released in full this weekend, and  the Guardian University Guide 2024, which was published last weekend.

“To make history by coming top in both the Times and Guardian University Guides in the same season is a special way to start a new academic year in St Andrews,” said Professor Dame Sally Mapstone, St Andrews’ principal and vice-chancellor.

The annual guide evaluates the competing universities on everything from satisfaction with teaching quality, student experience, completion rates, and graduate employment prospects.

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This comes on the backdrop of seven in ten Scottish businesses struggling with a skills shortage according to the Open University and British Chambers of Commerce. According to them, 42% of organisations say lack of applicants has prevented them from filling the roles. 

In the Scottish ranking, behind St Andrews was the University of Glasgow, followed by the University of Edinburgh, the University of Aberdeen, University of Strathclyde, the University of Dundee, Glasgow Caledonian University, the University of Stirling, and Robert Gordon University.

“This achievement belongs completely to our fantastic staff and hard-working students. It reflects a deep institutional commitment to a critical balance of world-leading research and teaching, and the ways in which St Andrews students respond to that,” said Mapstone.

“This is a place where every single person matters, and can make a difference, even in challenging times and when we all need to advocate constantly for the transformative powers of well-supported university education,” said Barry Will, president of the University of St Andrews students’ association.

St Andrews is home to a number of successful tech spinout companies such as  X-Genix, which took the top prize at last year’s Converge Awards, SolOLED which landed £200k of funding last year, and KindHive, Marine Forest and Silico which were named part of the next Converge cohort.