Plan lodged to allow St Andrews to award medical degrees again
SCOTLAND’S oldest university could finally be able to award students full medical and dental degrees for the first time in 54 years.
The University of St Andrews has been unable to award full degrees to students since the 1960s because of a historical law that banned them from doing so.
Instead, the top university hands out degrees in medical science, and sends students to other institutions to study the clinical part of their course.
But a Scottish Parliament committee has called for evidence to change the law, which would give St Andrews the right to award full medical and dentistry degrees from 2022.
MSP Lewis Macdonald, convener of the Health and Sport Committee, said: “St Andrews is the only ancient university not to award medical and dental degrees.
“This bill looks to revisit this matter and, if passed, would be the first step in allowing the university to award such degrees for the first time since 1966.”
The law originates from a historic struggle to establish a university in Dundee separate from 607-year-old St Andrews.
The rift began when, in 1881, Miss Mary Ann Baxter and her cousin, John Boyd Baxter – two of the famous Baxter family, who made their money from the Jute mills of the city – donated £140,000 to the creation of a college in Dundee.
Power was given eight years later to commissioners to affiliate University College Dundee and make it part of St Andrews.
But the Universities (Scotland) Act 1966 made the two universities separate and stopped St Andrews for being able to grant degrees in medicine and dentistry.
As the clinical part of the medical school was based in Dundee, St Andrews teaching hospital and the university lost its right to award MBCHB1 medical degrees.
The University of St Andrews (Degrees in Medicine and Dentistry) Bill would repeal a section of the Universities (Scotland) Act 1966, and allow the university to award the qualification to
Scottish Graduate Entry Medicine (Scottgem) students in 2020.
The General Medical Council still needs to approve the plans.
Senior doctors who studied at St Andrews but completed their degree at the University of Manchester believe the move could attract more Scottish medics to the university.
Peter Taylor studied at St Andrews from 1998, before completing his studies in Manchester at the city’s Royal Infirmary. He is now a clinical senior lecturer, consultant and endocrinologist in Cardiff.
Mr Taylor said: “It could make St Andrews a more attractive destination for Scottish students studying medicine.
“The majority of people at medical school end up, long-term, working where they qualify, so Scots who ultimately want to stay in Scotland could have been put off the course before.
“It will be interesting to see where students are sent to study – the hospitals at Kirkcaldy and Dunfermline are very good, but small and couldn’t support a whole cohort of students to train, while Dundee has its own students.”
The move would end more than a century of conflict between the two institutions centred on the medical school.
Initially, UCD and St Andrews worked alongside each other in relative harmony. Dundee students were able to graduate in Science from St Andrews, despite never having attended any classes in the smaller town.
Relations, however, soon became strained over the issue of the Medical School. The Universities Scotland Act of 1889 reorganised the legal position of university courts and senates, and under its provisions, commissioners were given the power to affiliate University College Dundee and make it part of St Andrews.
Medicine was left in a confused position.with both Dundee and St Andrews laying claim to teaching the pre-clinical subjects.
On August 1, 1967, the royal charter was granted and the University of Dundee was formally established was now free to develop in its own way and retaining the Medical School.
It could make St Andrews a more attractive destination for Scottish students studying medicine