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The University at 575: powered by students

In our final feature celebrating the milestone of 575 years in existence for the University, we focus on what life at UofG means, and has meant, to our students – all 350,000+ who have passed through our doors since they opened in 1451.

The first student community

In its earliest years, the University was a small community of four teachers and just ten to twenty students, some as young as ten years old. Education was limited to a select elite who studied in and spoke Latin, the shared language of scholarship across Europe.

University life was also deeply religious, with scripture reading and prayer at its heart. Teachers and students would attend church together twice every Sunday and ate together at a common table, reinforcing a close-knit academic and spiritual community.

Growing numbers

From 1560 to 1690, the University underwent major change. Fundraising for new accommodation took place amid religious and political turmoil, and state-of-the-art facilities in a quadrangle layout were completed in 1690. By 1702, the ‘Old College’, as the University on the High Street became known, housed 400 students, with live-in accommodation for 40 and others boarding nearby.

Official records rarely show individual students’ perspectives. Our understanding of University life comes largely from sources left by professors, which reveal their views on how a Glasgow student should live and learn.

A new chapter at Gilmorehill

Nineteenth-century Glasgow was the self-confident ‘second city of the Empire’, with a vibrant economic and cultural life. New educational approaches emerged to meet the challenges of the industrial age. The professors sold the Old College site to make way for the growing railway network and to fund campus expansion. They chose the fresh air of Gilmorehill in the west end to escape the city-centre pollution which had impacted University life for decades.

On the High Street campus, societies dedicated to academic, social and political pursuits were well established, meeting in the many taverns and venues in the city centre. The move to Gilmorehill transformed this arrangement. New university spaces now had to accommodate teaching, meetings, public lectures and ceremonial events, leaving student societies to compete for room within an increasingly complex campus timetable.

In 1885, students and alumni gathered in the Bute Hall to find a way forward.

Students find their voice

Glasgow University Students’ Representative Council (SRC) first met on 9 March 1886.

Its foundational aims were “to represent the Students in such matters as affect their interests, to afford a recognised means of communications between Students and the University authorities and to promote social and academic unity among the Students.”

At its inaugural meeting, Robert Mark Wenley was elected the first President. Wenley later became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan and was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Glasgow in 1901, during its 450th anniversary.

The SRC at 140

Today, the SRC elects up to 49 students each year to represent UofG’s student population. It also provides student opportunities and community engagement in the form of over 300 clubs and societies, as well as free professional and confidential advice, a second-hand book marketplace and events running throughout the year.

SRC President for 2025–26 Duncan Calvert (MA 2025, left) underlines how the mission of the SRC has broadened since its early days. “It provides students with a voice, right up and down the University’s governance structure – from class reps to school reps; welfare and equal opportunity reps, and sabbatical officers. It all gives students a lot more power in determining what the university and student experience is like.