It’s not just the Edinburgh Tab that’s the problem, Glasgow too has an issue with classism.

It’s fair to say that a University education is no longer the great divider in society that it once was. In 1970, the percentage of young people going into Higher Education sat at just over eight percent, while that figure has grown to over 40 percent today. While subsequent governments from John Major in the nineties, to Keir Starmer today, have pursued growth in the education sector, student numbers have skyrocketed. Today, the novel that accurately encapsulates university life is probably something written by Dolly Aderton or Sally Rooney, rather than Evelyn Waugh.

While this is true, that isn’t to say that there aren’t still significant barriers to higher education and pronounced class divides within universities. Last semester, the Edinburgh Tab was ‘cancelled’ for making videos which were seen by some as classist and anti-Scottish. I’ve never been terribly enthusiastic about throwing around ‘isms’ in order to attack a person or an institution, but this was a case in which the Tab genuinely seemed to be motivated by prejudice.  

A post on Instagram by University of Edinburgh Scottish Mobility Society shows TikToks by the Edinburgh Tab which said “me after enraging the 4 scottish people that actually go to edinburgh uni” and responding to the comment “not a scot in sight” with “as god intended”. The row intensified after the University has reportedly asked its students to not be “snobs” and the behaviour was criticised by the University's newly elected rector.

Anti-Scottish and classist sentiments aren’t a new issue at Edinburgh University, where two in five students were privately educated and where, along with the University of St. Andrews, the lowest proportion of Scottish students study anywhere in the country.

Still, we at Glasgow shouldn’t be complacent. Just because these issues aren’t as public is not to say they don’t exist here, and it is only when they arise that it becomes clear how widespread they are.

Why should people from Glasgow listen to such drivel from a foreign student studying in their own city?

A recent article from The Glasgow Guardian in which a member of Glasgow Students for Choice interviewed (drum-roll) another member of Glasgow Students for Choice, the writer said that “sex education remains taboo in many lower-class communities”, with the Vice-President of the society saying: “Being literate in reproductive health is a privilege…A lot of people in Glasgow were left out of the advent of modern sexuality. If you didn’t have access to tertiary education, you were outside of conversations about sex ed.”

Why should people from Glasgow listen to such drivel from a foreign student studying in their own city? That is, assuming that the Glaswegians have the ability to do so and aren’t utterly consumed by their vulgar and outmoded sexual attitudes. They should surely just be glad that they have students coming here willing to enlighten them on the sexual revolution, knowledge of which, as the interviewee says, is (somehow) dependent on a University education.

The article also helpfully points out that the 'Vice President' interviewee “attended high school in the UAE, living in Dubai for eight years before starting university”, where the average expat salary is over $50,000 on almost non-existent tax (that would put an earner well above the median income for Scots).

What an article like this exemplifies is the patronising attitude towards the people of Glasgow, particularly working-class Glaswegians (not that the term is used, with the writer instead opting for “lower class”) still held by many students at the University. 

Our news cycle is a fast one, and the story about snobbery at Edinburgh has been quickly forgotten about. Nonetheless, I think it is incumbent upon us as students, and that it would do our University credit, for us to recognise the fact that the issue is alive at the University of Glasgow and let 2025 be the year we try to do something about it.

Published 20 January 2025