Written by Gaia Smedts
Illustrated by Lucienne Saisselin
The view of the University of Edinburgh as a boy’s club of white English gentlemen seems
greatly weakened with a majority women student body and the university advertising itself as
a place of progress and acceptance. However, elitism in the form of a university ‘brand’ (and
administrative policy) is still here. Approximately 40 percent of current UK-based Edinburgh
University students attended private secondary school (Brown and Gooden 2024). This is
despite only 6% of people in the UK undergoing private secondary education (Institute for
Fiscal Studies) demonstrating the enduring links between private education and this
institution. Elitism is seen in our student body daily, creating and replicating generations of
middle- and upper-class workers.
To write this article I completed a small survey of students. Most agreed that elitism was still
very present which is unsurprising. This is expected as firstly, the sample size was largely
drawn from friends who I would expect to share views with me. But, secondly, to me it is self-
evident that university is inherently exclusive. Education is lauded as the key to opening
doors, social mobility and as a meritocratic force. In many ways, this is true. However, for a
university to be enduringly ranked at the top of arbitrary surveys and articles, it must
maintain a brand of prestige.
This is supported by low acceptance numbers, high research output, and similar factors often with very little relevance to student satisfaction. That means that universities must be selective, not all people will produce equally great research and the university will prioritise that. In a system in which education and opportunities are not equal and the university puts people on an equal footing, people with the best education and opportunities will come out on top.
My small survey showed that it was Scottish and Northern English respondents who were
most likely to call out direct elitism and discrimination. They were often most aware of the
private/public school divide and most reported experiencing some form of accent
discrimination. This was also the group most likely to report low household income. This
aligns with the university’s ‘widening participation’ scheme that flags students from the most
underdeveloped and low-performing Scottish state schools in an attempt to increase Scottish
student admission levels (UoE 2024). A couple of people in my survey referred to Edinburgh
as an ‘English outpost’. An unsurprising opinion for Scottish students to have considering
they comprise 25% of the student body in a Scottish university.
The experience of going from majority to minority - especially if they are working class - was shocking and lonely. Adding onto this a culture of nepotism (that is first built in private schools) securing jobs for the upper class, students often felt angry with the university seeing it as impossible to achieve ‘greatness’. For people who reported themselves lower-class and some middle, university was seen simply as the difference between a blue-collar or white-collar job.
No one mentioned any experience of race-based discrimination in their responses to
whether they believed a culture of elitism was strong in Edinburgh although it did feature in
whether they considered themselves part of the elite.
Coming from a country such as Australia, this was surprising as idea of exclusion is nearly always implicitly tied with race. I specifically chose not to define elitism when asking people about the topic which could have influenced this. I had expected race to feature much more strongly, especially amongst my international student friends for whom English was not a first language and/or came from countries considered by the Western canon as ‘developing’. International students in the survey had much more varied and fluid concepts of elitism. This often referred to its subtlety or insidious nature, for many of them, elitism was a form of social exclusion rather than direct discrimination.
This reflected my own experience of elitism at the university. I was not shocked by it as
much as I struggled to infiltrate social bubbles. I spent my first year in Pollock Halls as
sharing a room with a roommate as it made my accommodation significantly cheaper. In this
space, I met the stereotypical private school elite. I distinctly remember complaining about
the difficulty of budgeting without a job to a new friend and her recommending a stock
market app that had helped her encourage to save through investing. Throughout the
conversation, she revealed her mother had lent her £5000 to invest and keep any revenue.
She was almost embarrassed by it, repeating she wasn’t allowed to keep the £5000 - it was
just to teach her to save and invest. We drifted apart from a lack of common interests
unsurprisingly.
The people I surveyed that I had considered most likely to be ‘elite’ also surprised me. One
respondent, an upper-class British-American white man reported that while he knew his
name, appearance and economic background gave his privilege in society, he did not hold
the interest and or the social skills to be able to truly be part of the upper echelon. Similarly,
an English respondent said she did not consider herself upper-class as she did not have a
title of nobility. A concept I found confusing and perhaps ironically elitist in itself. I found it
striking as people I had surveyed that I considered close to the top, often had a different
perception of elitism entirely. Often, the higher the income, the more aware they were of the
difference between themselves and the extremely rich.
Elitism is complicated by the continuous budget cuts in the University as Edinburgh
University takes on a more profit-based business model (Grove 2025). On one hand, being
an ultra-modern progressive institution is a selling point and a businesslike approach to
university has encouraged diversity. On the other hand, students of all classes perceive a
declining quality of their education and feel under-prepared for the historically competitive
job market. The result is that class divides run a real risk of becoming more entrenched. For
the elite, equality in education feels a lot like persecution as what is seen as a scarce
resource is taken by lower-class people. For the lower class, there is an ever-present
‘othering’ and frustration as opportunities closer than ever still appear inaccessible.
Bibliography
Institute for Fiscal Studies (2023), ‘Tax, private school fees and state school spending’.
Brown and Godden (2024). Why Scottish students at Edinburgh University want more
support to counter classism, BBC.
Grove. (2025). Nothing off the Table says Edinburgh Head on School Closures. Times
Higher Education.
University of Edinburgh (2024). widening-participation scheme
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