education university of edinburgh

Education Futures

Understand and build new and vital educational possibilities for the future by bringing together research-led, cross-disciplinary and data-driven approaches to educational knowledge, organisations, spaces, and relationships.

What you will study

Career & employability.

Your Experience

Fees & Scholarships

Entry requirements

How organisations, systems, and people learn and change profoundly affects our lives, our surroundings, and our futures.

This MSc programme is for those who wish to engage critically with educational possibilities for the future, and understand how educational knowledge, organisations, spaces and relationships can positively shape societies.

Designed to respond to the need for creative, critical, and experimental thinking across education in schools, universities, and colleges, and learning within communities, industries, and organisations. Some of the issues you will explore include mobility, politics, environmental change, culture, social justice, and how data-driven systems for managing and understanding the world influence learning and education.

“On this programme we are really thinking about how education is shaped by society and politics, by culture, by climate crisis, by all kinds of factors that mean that education will look quite different in the future than it does now.” Dr Jen Ross, Co-Director, Education Futures

This programme is part of our interconnected postgraduate study options focused on complex global and social challenges.

You will be taught by academic experts from different subject areas. You will develop creative, critical, and data-informed thinking that cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries. You will have the space to think deeply about questions linked to your own passions and professional goals, and to develop a project based on an issue that you care about.

This degree will enable you to:

• Understand and critically examine possible futures for formal and informal education.
• Analyse education’s role in shaping and responding to global challenges and social, political, cultural, and environmental change, as well as how global processes are shaping education.
• Make critical links between education and data-driven innovation, exploring the geographies, mobilities, values, ethics, and forms of measurement that accompany innovation, resistance to, and reliance on data.
• Use computational datasets, critical inquiry, futures methodologies with an interdisciplinary team working to address societal challenges relating to education futures.

This programme includes core courses on the essential, critical, and hands-on data skills, enquiry methods, ethical, and creative capacities needed to underpin your study. It includes a wide portfolio of optional courses taught by academic staff from different discipline areas, and the opportunity to apply your learning in depth to an issue or concern which drives you for your final project.

As well as knowledge specific to your area of study, our core courses give you the skills and understanding you need to become a creative, confident, and critical citizen in an unpredictable world, including:

• data skills
• understanding of data ethics
• an ability to interrogate issues of global scope
• creative and analytic approaches that are vital for building better futures and succeeding in rapidly changing environments

An interdisciplinary programme can help your career and future employability.

The challenges of the modern world and our rapidly changing environment demand new ways of working that can disrupt the status quo and challenge established ways of thinking.

Edinburgh Futures Institute is part of a large, diverse, global community that includes more than 44,000 students studying in more than 150 academic disciplines. Here you will work at the highest academic level alongside some of the most influential people in your field. And you will be able to do it both online and on campus.

In addition to outstanding facilities, high quality teaching, and unique links to industry and innovation, University of Edinburgh graduates are ranked 25th in the world by employers, *  making Edinburgh an excellent choice for a postgraduate education with prospects.

* QS World University Rankings 2022

Our distinctive postgraduate programmes and interdisciplinary approach benefit graduates in a number of ways that support future employability and development.

This includes developing core data skills, the knowledge and ability to apply ethics to data use and decisions, how to interrogate issues of global scope, and the creative and analytic approaches that are vital to approach challenges in new, robust, and data-informed ways.

Recent graduates will be well placed to enter the job market as ‘translators’ between data scientists and people operating at strategic or operational levels – potential roles include private, public, and third sector project and programme managers, policy advisers, analysts, and consultants.

For students with prior professional experience, the programme will support career development (and transition) as leaders in new or existing sectors with a strong data and/or inclusion aspect.

The core elements of the programme address the data and higher-order skills we know are important for the future of work, confident and critical citizenship, and a thriving, just society.

We have lots of exiting opportunities to connect our diverse and talented students with a range of professional and sector specific experience.

In your final project, you will be able to apply your learning in depth to a domain, issue or concern which drives you. It could be:

• based on your own personal or professional interests
• defined by your employer
• proposed by one of our EFI industry, third-sector or community partners
• aligned to one of the EFI research programmes

Here at the Edinburgh Futures Institute you will be part of a dynamic and diverse community, whether you choose to study on campus or online.

Our unique fusion teaching approach means you are able to study with an on campus and online cohort – benefiting from diverse and global groups of peers, in fully supported digital learning environments and in our beautiful, historic and central Edinburgh campus .

Whether you study on campus or online, you will benefit from being a student at a global institution, recognised for our world-leading research, development and innovation, and 425 years of excellent teaching.

You will have access to a wide range of University study support services, such as the University’s extensive library collections, world class laboratories, museums and galleries, impressive sports facilities, and a huge choice of student societies and activities.

The Student Careers Service, Student Counselling Service ,and University Health Centre are available and free to students, while our Student Disability Service provides a range of support for students with disabilities. We also offer excellent childcare services, making it easier to juggle parenthood and study.  

We are committed to being a world leader in addressing global challenges including poverty, climate change, and the growing demand for energy, food, and water.

As Scotland’s first Fairtrade University, we have been promoting better conditions for farmers and communities in developing countries since 2004.

We have championed environmental sustainability since the early 1990s, and were a founder signatory to the Universities and Colleges Climate Commitment 2009 and to the 10:10 campaign.

The University is host to several Global Academies committed to tackling issues related to health, justice, environment, and agriculture and food security. The Academies cross boundaries in research and teaching, adopting a multi-disciplinary response to challenging global issues.

Edinburgh Futures Institute offers a rich array of events, including the global  Edinburgh Futures Conversations series   which is aimed at promoting global cooperation in solving the critical challenges facing the world and brings together global influencers, academic experts, policymakers, writers, activists and artists, including alumni and students.

We also have dynamic seasonal programmes of public events, mostly delivered in hybrid format, which are free and open to all. Our Autumn 2022 season,  First Breath , is  available to watch online . The Futures Institute’s Spring 2023 Season – Love Machine , which focused on the interconnections between artificial intelligence and being human is also available to watch online . Sign up to our mailing list  if you would like to receive event information.

We offer a unique experience to our graduate students, including the opportunity to work with leading academics and diverse communities and partners in an ambitious, creative, “what-if” environment that will let you explore your passions.

The events and activities that are part of your programme are available both online and on campus, starting with welcome activities that include a mixture of introductory events and social activities.

Details of our tuition fees, as well as the scholarships and funding available to help you pursue your ambitions.

Since online and on campus students study together, and we want to provide flexibility to move from on campus to online study, you will pay the same rate whether you choose to study online or on campus.

Students studying on a part-time basis will pay pro rata over multiple years. It is possible that the University will apply an inflationary increase in future years.

Find more information about tuition fee rates, along with information about how to pay your tuition fees and how we determine your fee status here:

Scholarship opportunities

For further information about scholarship opportunities and funding your postgraduate study, please visit the University of Edinburgh’s Scholarships and Student Funding Service.

A UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent, in any discipline.

We will also consider your application if you have other professional qualifications or experience; please contact us to check before you apply. In particular, we welcome applications from professionals with experience (e.g. working in companies, government, or third sector organisations) designing or implementing projects, programmes, or policies that aim to diminish inequalities.

These entry requirements are for the 2023/24 academic year and requirements for future academic years may differ. Entry requirements for the 2024/25 academic year will be published on 2 October 2023.

What to expect at Edinburgh Futures Institute

Our approach, interdisciplinary, challenge-led, data-driven, co-creative, entrepreneurship, flexible study.

Flexible study options, fusion learning, interdisciplinary teaching, and a focus on complex global and social challenges.

You will have the space to think deeply about issues linked to your own passions and professional goals.

Our programmes are an interconnected portfolio of postgraduate study offering a shared core and unique fusion learning. Our focus is on interdisciplinary teaching and research that addresses complex global and social challenges. You will be taught by academic experts from different subject areas. And you will develop creative, critical and data-informed thinking that cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries.

We use an approach called ‘fusion teaching’ so you have greater choice about when you study on-campus, and when you study online.

If you are considering full-time online study, please note that all courses require significant synchronous engagement in the classroom. Get in touch with us with questions before applying.

Interdisciplinary means the ability to synthesise and apply knowledge and skills from across different disciplines.

It is crucial to addressing complex challenges and planetary-scale issues. It is also increasingly important to employers and future career development and supports the modern skills needed by today’s graduates.

We offer fundamentally interdisciplinary study and draw on diverse disciplines to support you to work creatively and ethically with all kinds of data. Each postgraduate programme develops interdisciplinary perspectives in the ways most appropriate to its specific focus and offers you the flexibility to design your own disciplinary pathway through your studies, and through your project-related work.

We are creating innovative ways of bringing together disciplinary expertise in response to complex problems.

Studying in a challenge-led environment means you will learn to scope, explore, understand, and work on complex, multi-stakeholder challenges for the benefit of society.

Developing insights from across disciplines and applying them to complex challenges (organisational, cultural, societal or environmental) are fundamental to your studies at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. In your final project, you will be able to apply your learning in depth to a domain, issue or concern that you care about.

For most programmes you can choose to define your own project, bring a project your employer would like you to address, work on a project set by one of our external partners or align your project to one of our research programmes. You will have support to choose and develop your final project.

Data shapes our world and increasingly underpins our lives, work and learning.

Understanding how to use data ethically, innovatively and collaboratively is essential for citizens, professionals, businesses and governments. It is also critical for employers and professionals across different sectors.

All our MSc programmes include core data skills which will help you to learn data-led decision making, data innovation and collaboration, and the fundamentals of data ethics. While supporting you to use your creative skills in the analysis and representation of data-informed and qualitative inquiry.

We’re working with organisations and professionals, from sectors like fintech , creative industries , public services and tourism to tackle challenges, improve products and services, and develop new ones through better use and understanding of data.

Ethical data and advanced data skills

Data and AI Ethics is a central and cross-cutting theme at Edinburgh Futures Institute, this is underpinned by the work of the Centre for Techomoral Futures (CTMF) .

In addition to the core data skills developed through our programmes, postgraduate students also have the opportunity to explore advanced digital methods with training from the Centre for Data, Culture and Society (CDCS) .

Fully embedded in our approach to teaching and learning is the art and practice of co-creation.

The outcomes of a co-creative culture are wide and varied and support trust-building, access to talent, networking, personal development and growth, and sharing ideas.

Our postgraduate programmes encourage students to exchange and explore how knowledge from multiple perspectives (civic, technical, corporate and social) can tackle the significant challenges that society faces in the present, and near futures. Our learning environment supports the flow of ideas and inspiration between learners, researchers, peers, industries and businesses and organisations.

“Connection, co-design, communities – this is a space where academics from diverse fields such as law, data science and art can unite with students, communities, charities, companies and policymakers to co-create solutions to shared problems in ways they otherwise couldn’t.” Professor Chris Speed, Director of Edinburgh Futures Institute, Chair of Design Informatics 

Develop sought-after entrepreneurial and innovation skills and be supported to pursue new, creative ideas and take risks. 

From design thinking to new approaches to social innovation, we recognise that entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes.

With a range of support from across the University of Edinburgh, and a dynamic community of partners within the Futures Institute, we are creating collaborative environments to pursue new endeavours.

The University of Edinburgh’s enterprise service for students and recent graduates (two years post-graduation) can help you startup, sustain and develop your entrepreneurial journey for any business, social enterprise or freelance endeavour.  

Learn new skills, join the thriving enterprise community, attend events and workshops, enter a competition or programme and receive one-on-one support. The service is free and you own 100% of your IP.

Most of our programmes offer a lot of flexibility in how you choose to study.

You can study on a full-time basis over one year, or part-time over two or three years.

You can register for a full MSc, or for a Postgraduate Diploma or Postgraduate Certificate. You can study our programmes either online or on-campus, or combine on-campus with online study (though please note that the MSc Creative Industries programme is full-time and on-campus only so it can benefit from Edinburgh’s strong cultural organisations).

There’s a lot to consider when selecting postgraduate study options. Here are some commonly asked questions. If you have others and would like to discuss please get in touch.

Yes you can. Options courses are open to students across programmes and outside of particular subject areas. However, this is always subject to availability and enrolment requirements and particular programmes will have precedence for some options courses related to their programme.

You can take a course offered by a different school but you must have approval from the Course Organiser of the course you wish to study before this can be confirmed. Certain courses may have pre-requisite requirements so you must also ensure that you have the appropriate level of knowledge to enrol. Edinburgh Futures Institute does not have authority over courses in other schools or areas of the University, so we cannot guarantee availability on outside courses.

The weekly time commitment for students depends on several factors, including your programme, course choices, and mode of study.

For guidance, we expect full-time students to study for approximately 35 hours per week, and part part-time (2 year) students to study for approximately 12-15 hours per week. For students studying the part-time (3 year) programmes, the weekly time commitment will vary depending on their own preferences or circumstances.

Edinburgh Futures Institute’s taught courses are all 10 SCQF credits, and each course involves a minimum of 14 hours of synchronous engagement (where students work together at the same time). A full-time student will study six 10-credit courses per semester. A part-time (2 year) student will study approximately three to four 10-credits courses per semester.

Yes, lectures or presentations given during the intensive sessions are recorded and made available after the session. Group work and group discussions are not recorded.

No, a background in coding is not necessary to study at Edinburgh Futures Institute. All fundamental coding skills that might be needed for a course will be taught to students. However, an awareness of different systems or skills may be beneficial.

Throughout your studies at Edinburgh Futures Institute, you will have several sources of academic and personal support. Your Programme Director is a key person who offers academic guidance to on your arrival, and each programme also has a dedicated Cohort Lead who is responsible for building community among students.

Additionally, students are assigned a Student Adviser. Your Student Adviser provides a range of support, including general course guidance, signposting University policies or services, advice on wellbeing matters, or tailored support for students with additional needs.

For students who plan to complete the Knowledge Integration and Project Planning and the Futures Project courses (the project), you are also assigned an academic staff member who supervises your work and provides guidance on your final project.

We contact students regarding course selection at the end of August and personalised timetables are available when teaching starts. We aim to provide you with timetabling information before you make your course choices, so you can make informed decisions and avoid potential clashes.

Edinburgh Future’s Institute is founded on interdisciplinarity so there is a significant amount of group work within our courses. We encourage interdisciplinary thinking and working by enabling students enrolled on different programmes to come together in groups and share ideas. Course assessments also reflect this and many courses include both individual and group assessment tasks.

Fusion learning and teaching involves a mix of synchronous sessions (where all students work together at the same time), and asynchronous activities (where students work at their own pace). During synchronous sessions, students on the Edinburgh campus work with online students who join the session via Microsoft Teams. You can find out more about fusion learning or take a 360-degree tour of a Fusion classroom .

How to apply

There are lots of things to consider when choosing an postgraduate degree – from your own interests and passions, to the requirements for acceptance, to where you will study. An interdisciplinary degree offers opportunities to study across different subjects and add depth to your education.

Open Days, tours and virtual visits

Our open day sessions will provide you a great opportunity to learn a bit more about the Edinburgh Futures Institute, and to take a deep-dive into each of our interdisciplinary MSc programmes, presented by those who will teach you.

Discover more at Edinburgh Futures Institute

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Get in touch to discuss your application, join us to challenge, create, and make change happen..

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MSc in Digital Education

Since 2006, the MSc in Digital Education has been at the forefront of critically exploring the intersections of technology in education, noting how these intersections have political, social, and equitable ramifications, and crafting creative and confident responses to these critiques.

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Critical and practical, research-based teaching.

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University of Edinburgh

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University of Edinburgh , coeducational, privately controlled institution of higher education at Edinburgh , one of the most noted of Scotland’s universities. It was founded in 1583 as “the Town’s College” under Presbyterian auspices by the Edinburgh town council under a charter granted in 1582 by King James VI, who later became King James I of England. In 1621 an act of the Scottish Parliament accorded all the rights and privileges of Scotland’s three older universities to the Town’s College, after which it gradually assumed the name of the University of Edinburgh. The university remained under the control of the Edinburgh town council until 1858, when it received autonomy under the Universities Act.

The university initially consisted of a liberal arts college and a school of divinity. Schools of medicine and law were established in the early 18th century, and faculties of music, science, arts, social sciences, and veterinary medicine were subsequently added.

Although its faculty of divinity has always been of singular importance to the university, its school of medicine is also renowned. The English naturalist Charles Darwin studied medicine there. The University of Edinburgh has produced a long line of eminent cultural figures, including the novelist Sir Walter Scott , the philosopher and historian James Mill , the essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle , the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson , and the inventor Alexander Graham Bell .

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Pre-Sessional English Programme Graduate Scholarship

10% fee discount on full time taught postgraduate degree fees and is available to students with international fee status who are domiciled in one of 13 countries* and have successfully completed the Postgraduate Pre-Sessional English Programme in academic year 2024/25 and have accepted an offer of study for a full time postgraduate taught degree programme in 2025/26.

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This article was published on 2023-11-21

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The University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh is the sixth oldest university in the UK and the oldest civic foundation in the English-speaking world. Today, the University is home to over 45,000 students spread across five campuses around the city. These campuses also house some of the world’s most important collections, including art, musical instruments, natural history, geology, anatomy, rare books and manuscripts. 

90% of their research was recently deemed world leading or internationally excellent and they have been awarded the prestigious Queen’s Anniversary Prize five times. As well as this, their commercial service has helped launch more than 500 companies since 1967.

The University’s three Colleges host 21 Schools and is one of the world’s top research-intensive universities, ranked 4th in the UK for research power (Times Higher Education, Overall Ranking of Institutions), with 90% of our research activity classified as world leading or internationally excellent in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.

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Facts & Stats

• Consistently ranked as one of the top 50 universities in the world.
• Ranked 15th in the 2023 QS World University Rankings.
• Ranked 4th in the UK for research power, based on the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (Times Higher Education, Overall Ranking of Institutions).
• 19 Nobel Prize winners who are alumni of the University or have been members of academic staff here.
• Ranked in the UK’s top 10 universities for the employability of graduates. (Times Higher Education, Global Employability University Ranking 2022).
• Ranked 22th in the world’s most international universities (Times Higher Education: The World’s Most International Universities 2023).
• Consistently finishing in the top four of the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) rankings.
• More than 320 student societies covering sport, politics, social and community support, and the arts.
• Oldest student newspaper and oldest purpose-built student union in the world.
• Home of the James Tait Black Prizes – Britain’s oldest literary awards.

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They have a long history of delivering research firsts. Their researchers developed Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be genetically cloned from an adult somatic cell; the first genetically engineered hepatitis B vaccine; the first automated industrial assembly robot; and the first in-vitro fertilisation. They also led the Atlas team at CERN, which co-discovered the Higgs Boson.

Employability

They offer strong employability prospects with their graduates are ranked 25th in the world by employers. (QS World University Rankings 2022). 

Their facilities are excellent. They have 10 libraries including the third largest academic library in Europe. The university is home to one of the UK’s 15 Wellcome Trust clinical research facilities; the unique FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility, the world’s most sophisticated ocean simulator; and host to the UK's National Supercomputer, ARCHER2.

Best universities in Scotland 2024

Find out all about scotland's top universities, and explore their world university ranking performance.

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Scotland has a reputation for excellence in education, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024 . It has the monopoly on Britain’s share of ancient universities too. Four of the top five universities in Scotland were founded before 1600, with the oldest, St Andrews, dating back to 1413.

Each year, when the World University Rankings are released, we use the data to compile a list of the top universities in Scotland. Based on the World University Rankings results compiled by our in-house data team, the University of Edinburgh is the best university in Scotland, with the University of Glasgow and the University of St Andrews in second and third places, respectively.

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Click each institution to view its full World University Rankings 2024  results

How we selected the best university in Scotland

The best universities in Scotland list is compiled by filtering the World University Rankings by each individual country. In this case we selected only the universities in Scotland that were in the World University Rankings to compile this list. 

Universities that submit data to the World University Rankings are assessed based on the following criteria: Teaching (the learning environment); Research Environment (volume, income and reputation); Research Quality (citation impact, research strength, research excellence and research influence); International Outlook (staff, students and research); and Industry (income and patents).

Our in-house data team also collects key statistics from each university, including the number of students, the student gender ratio, the staff-to-student ratio and the percentage of international students.

The full methodology for the World University Rankings can be found here

Best universities in Scotland 2023 vs 2024

There have been a few small changes to the best universities in Scotland between 2023 and 2024. While the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow maintained their top two positions, there were significant changes elsewhere.

The University of St Andrews moved up from joint fourth to third place, while the University of Aberdeen dropped from third to fourth in the rankings.

Robert Gordon University , formerly ranked ninth in 2023 shares 12th position in 2024. SRUC (Scotland’s Rural College) entered the top 10 this year. 

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1. University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh is Scotland’s most prestigious institution. It is ranked as one of the best universities in the world for arts and humanities, but also for law and psychology.

Students at the University of Edinburgh  have the privilege of studying in some of the oldest and most enchanting buildings in the city.

The university has inspired some of the greatest minds in Scottish history, such as the philosopher David Hume and Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s also the place where Dolly the sheep became the first successful example of animal cloning.

• Overall World Ranking: =30
• Students per Member of Staff: 11
• International Students: 46%
• Female to Male Student Ratio: 61:39

2. University of Glasgow

As one of the top research universities in the UK, Glasgow produces a vast quantity of internationally recognised papers. Glasgow rivals Edinburgh for its architecture, with more than 100 listed buildings.

Seven Nobel prize-winners and three prime ministers have studied at Glasgow. Unusually, there are two students’ unions at the university. This tradition dates from the time when male and female students attended different institutions.

Glasgow University Union is famous for sports, while Queen Margaret Union’s music venue hosts internationally famous bands. 

• Overall World Ranking: =87
• Students per Member of Staff: 14
• International Students: 43%
• Female to Male Student Ratio: 59:41

3. University of St Andrews

Scotland’s oldest university, the University of St Andrews is located in the town of the same name on the east coast of Fife. It often tops rankings of Scottish universities and is renowned for its academic rigour and excellent research.

Notable alumni include six Nobel laureates, a handful of global ambassadors and the Prince and Princess of Wales. 

The university has a focus on sustainability and has boosted efforts to become carbon neutral. To help achieve this, it runs initiatives such as an energy-saving competition between the student halls of residence and provides green spaces on campus where students can grow their own produce.

• Overall World Ranking: =193
• Students per Member of Staff: 12
• Female to Male Student Ratio: 58:42

4. University of Aberdeen

The University of Aberdeen is one of the leading universities in the UK for graduate employment.  Its campuses are a fascinating mix of old and new, reflecting the subject departments they contain.

Old Aberdeen campus has a 15th-century chapel and a state-of-the-art library, where arts and humanities students can find the perfect atmosphere to study.

Life sciences and medicine are mainly taught at the high-tech Foresterhill campus. The university also has a lighthouse field station and the Oceanlab research station, for studies specialising in marine ecology. 

• Overall World Ranking: 201-250
• Students per Member of Staff: 15
• International Students: 40%

=5. University of Dundee

The University of Dundee , established in 1881 is a leading public teaching and research institution. Initially in partnership with the University of St Andrews , it gained independent university status in 1967.

The university offers more than 500 courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, spanning sciences, business, arts and humanities, health, and law. The main campus is situated in the west end of the city.

The school of medicine and a research centre are located at Ninewells Hospital. The university’s student union hosts various events and sports contests. Sporting facilities encompass a gym, tennis courts and a 25-metre swimming pool.

The university provides eight student accommodation halls on- and off-campus, offering various shared-living options. 

• Overall World Ranking: 301-350
• Students per Member of Staff: 18
• International Students: 25%
• Female to Male Student Ratio: 65:35

=5. University of Strathclyde

Established in 1796, the University of Strathclyde stands as one of Glasgow’s oldest higher education institutions. The main campus is the John Anderson campus in the area of Strathclyde close to Glasgow city centre. 

The campus has diverse facilities, including student union spaces, sports amenities such as football and rugby pitches, indoor badminton courts and gym facilities. Academic facilities include the Technology and Innovation Centre, which has specialised pharmaceutical facilities.

• Students per Member of Staff: 16
• Female to Male Student Ratio: 51:49

7. Heriot-Watt University

Established in 1821 as the world’s first mechanics institute, Heriot-Watt University earned university status in 1966. With five campuses – in Edinburgh, the Scottish Borders, Dubai, Malaysia and Orkney – the university allows inter-campus transfers and participates in the Erasmus programme for international exchanges.

Organised into seven schools – including energy, geoscience, infrastructure and society; engineering and physical sciences; social sciences; mathematical and computer sciences; and textiles and design – the university offers a diverse range of academic disciplines.

•   Overall World Ranking: 351-400
•   Students per Member of Staff: 18
•   International Students: 36%
•   Female to Male Student Ratio: 39:61

8. University of Stirling

The University of Stirling is Scotland’s youngest university, having had its royal charter granted in 1967.

The university is organised across five academic faculties and offers a range of flexible courses and study-abroad opportunities

The university is also well known for its sporting facilities and courses. Stirling has strong sporting alumni associated with it, including professional golfer Gordon Sherry and Olympic swimmer Todd Cooper.

The university’s main campus is located a 10-minute bus ride away from the centre of Stirling, with other campuses in the Highlands, which offers a wide variety of medicine and teaching courses, and another in the Western Isles, situated close to Stornoway.

• Overall World Ranking: 401-500
• Students per Member of Staff: 19
• International Students: 28%
• Female to Male Student Ratio: 64:36

9. Edinburgh Napier University

Established in 1964, Edinburgh Napier University is a public university in Scotland. The university is made up of three campuses: Merchiston, Craiglockhart and Sighthill. 

The university comprises six schools offering a diverse range of courses in arts and creative industries, business, computing, engineering, the built environment, applied sciences, and health and social care. 

Edinburgh Napier University places a strong emphasis on practical experience, incorporating work placements into many courses and supporting student-led start-up businesses. There are a range of facilities, including a biomechanics lab, a clinical skills suite and multimedia studios, for students to use while they study there. 

• Overall World Ranking: 501-600
• Students per Member of Staff: 22
• International Students: 34%
• Female to Male Student Ratio: 52:48

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University of Edinburgh

We have 21 university of edinburgh masters degrees in education.

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Edinburgh Futures Institute

Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) is a large, new and future-facing part of the University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh Medical School

Medical research and teaching at Edinburgh has global impact, and benefits millions of individuals

Outdoor Environmental and Sustainability Education MSc, PgDip, PgCert

University of edinburgh moray house school of education.

Internationally-renowned Unique in Europe, and one of only a few in the world, this internationally-respected MSc programme offers you the chance to develop a holistic approach to outdoor education with a specific emphasis on environmental and sustainability education. Read more

Outdoor Education MSc, PgDip, PgCert

World-leading In 2022, we celebrated our 50th year of the Postgraduate Diploma in Outdoor Education and over 20 years as the MSc in Outdoor Education. Read more

Education MScR

Why Edinburgh? The University of Edinburgh was ranked first in Scotland for research power in Education and Sport (Times Higher Education, REF 2021) and we offer the largest concentration of researchers in education in a Scottish university. Read more

Language Education MSc, PgDip

The Language Education programme is for teachers of ALL languages. Come with an expertise in one or more language(s) and receive training in how to best teach these languages based on the latest research in the field of language education. Read more

Digital Education Online Learning MSc, PGCert, PGDip

Learning, teaching, training, and research are profoundly affected by the challenges and opportunities posed by the digital acceleration in education. Read more

Education MSc, PgCert, PgDip

The MSc Education is the flagship taught postgraduate degree of Moray House School of Education and Sport and one of its most popular programmes. Read more

Inclusive Education MSc, PgDip (ICL), PgCert (ICL), PgDip

The MSc Inclusive Education has been designed for graduates who want to make a difference to the lives of children and young people in education. Read more

Comparative Education and International Development (CEID)

The MSc Comparative Education and International Development (CEID) programme provides you with both: an academic foundation in the theories, issues, and… Read more

Education Futures (Online Learning) MSc, PgDip (ICL), PgCert

University of edinburgh edinburgh futures institute.

Education, in all its forms, is essential to a thriving society. How organisations, systems and people learn and change profoundly affects our lives, our surroundings and our futures. Read more

Education Futures MSc, PgDip (ICL), PgCert

An innovative, interdisciplinary degree with Edinburgh Futures Institute Education, in all its forms, is essential to a thriving society. Read more

Simulation Based Clinical Education (Online learning) PgCert

University of edinburgh edinburgh medical school.

The Postgraduate Certificate (PG Cert) in Simulation Based Clinical Education at the University of Edinburgh is an online, interprofessional programme which prepares graduates for clinical education careers involving simulation based learning, and provides you with opportunities for employment and career progression in the rapidly growing area of healthcare simulation. Read more

Dance Science and Education MSc, PgDip (ICL), PgDip

If you are interested in the development of dance education, a comprehensive understanding of the science underpinning the art form is a must. Read more

Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (Secondary) PGDE

The Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) Secondary is for graduates who want to become subject-specialist teachers in the secondary sector. Read more

Leadership and Learning MEd

You can earn the Masters of Education in Leadership and Learning through completing a mixture of Postgraduate Certificates (PgCert). Read more

Language and Intercultural Communication MSc, PgCert, PgDip

The MSc in Language and Intercultural Communication is an interdisciplinary degree programme that aims to provide a pedagogically grounded and practical understanding of issues surrounding the study of language and intercultural communication. Read more

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Moray House celebrates 175th anniversary

Moray House welcomed its first student teachers in September 1848. Since then, the School has become established as a world leader in education and sport.

Sports Hall of Fame

The University of Edinburgh’s Sports Hall of Fame was launched to honour and celebrate our most distinguished athletes. It is open only to students, graduates and staff of the University.

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Study at Moray House School of Education and Sport, ranked 7th in the UK and 21 st  in the world for sport-related studies (QS 2021), with routes to become a qualified teacher in Physical Education or Dance, to manage, coach and train athletes, and study at the highest level.

With over 60 Sport Clubs a packed recreational programme and exciting Intramural competition, there really is a place for everyone to play sport at Edinburgh.

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New EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Algebra, Geometry and Quantum Fields announced

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Algebra, Geometry and Quantum Fields (AGQ), brings together researchers in fundamental mathematics and physics from the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and Heriot-Watt University. Together they will lead the UK's first CDT to offer specific training in algebra and mathematical physics, alongside geometry and topology.

The School has an outstanding reputation in undergraduate and postgraduate education, and offers a wide range of undergraduate, MSc and PhD programmes.

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We work with a wide number of external organisations on collaborative research projects, consultancy work, and student activity. Find out more about how to work with us on future projects.

Our research is broad-ranging, and as part of the Maxwell Institute for Mathematical Sciences, we form one of the UK's leading research centres in Mathematics.

Centre for Statistics

The School of Mathematics leads on the Centre for Statistics, an interdisciplinary centre uniting data-driven researchers from across the University of Edinburgh and Associated Institutions, building the capacity needed to address key scientific and societal challenges. ​​​​​​

The School of Mathematics has a talented team of staff and students who work hard to communicate their love of mathematics to the wider community.

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Software : The School of Mathematics is home to several world-leading software packages.

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The School of Mathematics is dedicated to valuing and celebrating diversity, and ensuring equality of opportunity for all staff, students, and visitors. We are committed to creating a community which is inclusive and respectful of all our staff and students, and their lived experiences. Find out more about our strategy plus useful resources.

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The School of Mathematics are committed to making positive change in areas surrounding climate and sustainability. We are aiming to do this via our world-leading research and our engagement with industry, as well as through our curriculum to inspire the next generation of mathematicians.

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ERA is a digital repository of original research produced at The University of Edinburgh. The archive contains documents written by, or affiliated with, academic authors, or units, based at Edinburgh that have sufficient quality to be collected and preserved by the Library, but which are not controlled by commercial publishers. Holdings include full-text digital doctoral theses, masters dissertations, project reports, briefing papers and out-of-print materials.

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Undergraduate admissions statistics

Admissions statistics for undergraduate UCAS applications made in the entry admissions cycles from 2019 – 2023.

To support you in making an informed decision about applying to the University of Edinburgh, we have provided statistics that show:

• how many undergraduate applications we receive;
• how many offers we make; and
• how many students we accept.

Competition from well qualified applicants for places on most of our programmes is high and applications generally exceed the number of places available. So that you can gain a better understanding of application and offer statistics relative to the programme(s) you are considering applying for, and your tuition fee status, statistics for entry are also broken down by subject area and by tuition fee status.

Admissions statistics

Total number of applications received 2019 - 2023 ucas admissions cycles.

Offer rates and tuition fee status

Fee Regulations in Scotland changed in 2021, as a result of the UK leaving the EU. Most EU students are now included in the Overseas fee status group, and Republic of Ireland students are now included in the Rest of the UK/Republic of Ireland fee status group.

These changes have had a significant impact on offer chances, and data for years prior to 2021 may not be a good indication of current offer rates within the new fee status groupings.

Scotland Fee Rate students 

Scotland fee rate includes UK nationals who are normally resident in Scotland, and EU nationals with settled/pre-settled status who are normally resident in the UK. The Scottish Government places strict limits on the number of Scotland fee rate students that Scottish universities can admit. This means that Scottish universities are limited in the number of offers they can make to Scotland fee rate applicants.

Rest of UK and Republic of Ireland ( RUK/ROI )

There are no Scottish Government limits placed on the number of ‘Rest of UK ’ students (students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland) and Republic of Ireland students that Scottish universities can admit. However, due to limited capacity and the high volume of applications received, competition for places is often very high.

Overseas students

There are no Scottish Government restrictions on the number of places available to international applicants paying the full Overseas fee rate. Now that Britain has left the European Union, most applicants from the EU (excluding the Republic of Ireland) are considered as international applicants.

Selection process and offer rates

Applicants who have met, or are predicted to meet, our entry requirements, are entered into the selection process. However, due to Scottish Government policy which limits the intake of Scotland Fee Rate students, competition for places can vary across different tuition fee status groups. This can result in variations in the offer rate (the percentage of applications that receive an offer) for different tuition fee statuses to the same subject area.

Variations in the number of applications to different subject areas can also affect offer rates. Additionally, the number of offers that are accepted by applicants varies. While there are a number of reasons for this, acceptance is particularly impacted by where applicants apply from. This also has a bearing on why offer rates may differ between different tuition fee status groups.

Statistics for Undergraduate UCAS applications 2022-2023 admissions cycles

What is my fee status?

Viewing the statistics by the tuition fee status that is relevant to you, will give you the most accurate insight into patterns of application, offer and acceptance by your particular subject area(s) of interest.   

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This article was published on 2024-07-22

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How Edinburgh University bosses are planning cuts and recruitment controls as running costs hit £100m a month

Education Correspondent

Staff at Edinburgh University are seeking answers after being told bosses plan to cut spending and implement “significant constraint” on recruitment.

Sir Peter Mathieson, the principal of the prestigious institution, has written to staff outlining the “severity of the financial challenge” in the higher educations sector.

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He said Edinburgh was “not immune” to the pressures, but was taking action to respond, including “reducing our spending in all areas”.

In the memo, seen by The Scotsman, Sir Peter blames “systemic issues with our sector funding model”, with government funding not fully covering the tuition costs for UK students, while research usually costs more than it brings in, ensuring institutions rely on the fees of international students.

However, international student numbers are falling, which Sir Peter said was in part as a result of the impact of “recent UK government policy changes and rhetoric around student visas and immigration”.

He wrote: “We are in a better financial position than many other universities, and demand for places from applicants remains high, but we are not immune to the sector challenges, and we must take actions to ensure we remain financially resilient.

“Tuition fees account for 37 per cent of our total income. Like many other universities, we did not meet our recruitment targets in 2023-24 and this led to a shortfall against our projected tuition fee income.”

The Scotsman previously revealed how the number of students from overseas enrolling in taught postgraduate courses at Scottish universities was down by more than 20 per cent in the 2023/24 academic year, although the proportion varies by institution.

The email also said Edinburgh University’s running costs had been £90m per month in 2020, but had now risen to £100m per month, while the workforce has “grown by roughly 750 full-time equivalent staff in the last year alone”.

Sir Peter said: “Together, these factors mean our expenditure is rising at a faster rate than our income. This is an unsustainable trend.”

To address the pressure, he said leadership teams were working to “identify ways to reduce spending”, and that the university would “implement significant constraint on new and replacement staff recruitment for the foreseeable future”, with new staff appointments only to be made in “exceptional circumstances when roles are critical to our university mission”.

The principal concluded: “I realise this may be a difficult message to hear. My hope is that this email reassures you that we are taking action to adapt to the sector-wide challenges and continue to deliver and enhance the world-class research and teaching that is our core mission.”

It is the latest example of the escalating pressures in Scottish and UK’s higher education sector, with The Scotsman revealing Aberdeen University faced significant doubts over its future earlier this year, and that the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) is embarking on a controversial restructuring and amalgamation.

Staff at Robert Gordon University, in Aberdeen, are being balloted for industrial action over compulsory redundancies, meanwhile.

It also recently emerged that Sir Peter, who earns a salary of £348,000-a-year, a total package of £418,000, and has his  Regent Terrace home and bills  covered by the university, regularly stays in five-star hotels while on overseas trips.

In total, 343 employees at Edinburgh University are paid more than £100,000, including clinical staff.

Last year, the university’s total income, including capital grants, grew to a record £1.4billion, while it had total reserves of £2.6bn, and an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation) of £148m.

Expenditure in 2022/23 hit £1.227bn, with staff costs accounting for more than half, at £705m. A spokesperson from UCU union’s Edinburgh branch committee said: “UCU Edinburgh is still seeking greater transparency from university management on the rationale for the scope and placement of budget cuts, given the university's relatively strong financial position.

“While we are glad to be reassured by university management that there are no planned redundancies, we recognise that in such a climate, our members on casualised contracts are at greater risk of losing work, whilst permanent staff across academic and professional services roles continue to face ever-increasing workloads.

“These pressures will only be exacerbated by the university's current position on recruitment and will have a detrimental effect on student learning conditions as well as staff working conditions."

A university spokesperson said: “The University of Edinburgh is affected by the same headwinds and challenges as the wider UK higher education sector.

“It is in that context that we are taking steps to manage our overall expenditure to ensure our longer-term financial resilience.”

As Sir Peter outlined in his email, the pressures in the higher education sector are not confined to Scotland.

The Guardian reported on Friday that several institutions in England could reach a financial “tipping point” this autumn as institutions desperately battle to increase the number of students from south of the border, to plug shortfalls in international recruits.

In June, MSPs on Holyrood’s education committee heard evidence from Karen Watt, the outgoing chief executive of the Scottish Funding Council, which oversees universities, who said that the sector in Scotland “is not particularly overexposed on debt at this time”, compared to some in England.

Professor Iain Gillespie, Dundee University principal and convener of Universities Scotland, was asked if Scottish universities were likely to face closures.

He said: “The answer to that is no, because we have the ability to mitgate the financial pressures right now.

“If the decline in international student numbers and no change in the funding model continue for the next two or three years, risks will increase, and we will be likely to see universities really struggle to deal with the financial challenges.

“I cannot comment on whether there will be failures - that is for them - but the problems will accumulate, and they are accumulating.”

Last week, Sir Peter revealed how Edinburgh University , and others, carried out modelling in 2020 to prepare for the impact of losing income from international students during the early days of the Covid pandemic. They found “universities would be rapidly bankrupt if there was not mitigation”. In  an article  for the Policy Institute at King’s College London, he also outlined six ways the new UK government, and its Holyrood counterpart, could help the higher education sector flourish, including taking international students out of net migration targets, keeping and extending the graduate visa, and “adequately” funding the education of home students.

Meanwhile, new UCAS statistics show acceptances to Scottish institutions for home students have increased by 7 per cent to a new high of 31,220 this year.

There has also been a 12 per cent increase in acceptances from the most deprived areas in Scotland to all UK universities, up 540 on last year to a record 5,080.

The overall number of acceptances to Scottish universities is 35,930, an increase of 1,910, or 6 per cent, since last year.

The Scottish Government has said it is investing more than £1bn in teaching and research, including an increase in funding for research and innovation, despite facing the most challenging budget since devolution.

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Edinburgh secondary schools 2024: 22 high schools in Edinburgh ranked best to worst in new league table

Edinburgh's 15 top-rated high and secondary schools - based on Scottish government's 'gold standard'

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Here's how much weekly rent university students pay in the 10 most expensive UK towns and cities to study in

Lifestyle Editor

StuRents , the UK’s biggest student accommodation portal (think of RightMove for students ), has compiled some key stats that tell us about the student housing market around the country that many students will be entering.

With over 750,000 beds on its website, StuRents’ data portal is the most comprehensive source of insights and comments, including supply composition, demand seasonality, and pricing at an intra-city level.

The 10 cheapest cities and towns for private student rentals in 2024 (the price is average for both PBSA and HMO but excludes university beds) are as follows: Aberdeen - £96.08; Stoke-on-Trent - £100.51; Preston - £107.00; Huddersfield - £107.95; Hull - £109:95; Derby - £110.58; Norwich - £116.54; Newcastle-under-Lyme - £119.76; Aberystwyth - £123.34 and Leicester - £123.77.

But it’s a different picture entirely for those planning to study in the top-10 most expensive cities and towns for private student rentals in 2024, as you’ll see by scrolling through our picture gallery.

1 . The 10 most expensive and towns and cities for private student rentals

Take a look through our gallery to see the 10 most expensive and towns and cities in the UK for private student rentals. Photo: Pixabay

Weekly rent: £288.65 (the price is average for both PBSA and HMO but excludes university beds). Photo: Pixabay

3 . Bristol

Weekly rent: £220.77 (the price is average for both PBSA and HMO but excludes university beds). Photo: Pixabay

4 . Glasgow

Weekly rent: £204.77 (the price is average for both PBSA and HMO but excludes university beds). Photo: Pixabay

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• QMU transforms teaching spaces

QMU transforms its teaching and learning spaces

Queen Margaret University’s attractive modern campus, which was built in Musselburgh in 2007, is undergoing a significant transformation which will see the development of exciting new teaching and learning spaces.

The Future Spaces project involves the revitalisation of some of the University’s most important learning and teaching spaces to help ensure QMU meets the changing needs of students and staff. The work also aims to support QMU’s ambitions to refresh, enhance and modernise the campus so that it continues to attract prospective students and supports the growth of the university. 

With an investment of £2.1 million, students and staff can expect to see a dramatic change to the Learning Resource Centre and some ground floor classroom areas, which will ultimately expand capacity for self-directed and collaborative student learning and informal teaching activity. The enhancement and repurposing of spaces will also provide more flexible use of key areas of the building and a wider choice of more comfortable, vibrant, and sociable study space options. Some of the changes will also provide increased capacity for larger practical group work, which will provide greater flexibility with timetabling and support the delivery of high demand courses. 

"Queen Margaret University already has an attractive, bright, modern campus development, but it’s important that we continue investing in our buildings to ensure they reflect changes in the way students work and developments in the way we teach. Essentially, we want to create welcoming and comfortable study and teaching spaces where students want to be, and which will support and enhance their learning. Aside from supporting current students studying at the University, the investment will help us to remain competitive in our ability to attract prospective students."

A range of stakeholder engagement took place across the university through workshops, surveys and feedback sessions to help shape the plans and deliver attractive, flexible spaces which would inspire, motivate and support students to fully engage in a diverse range of learning opportunities. The renovation work involves the transformation of the Learning Resource Centre to create spaces which support social learning through collaborative and peer-group projects, and flexible spaces which support a diversity of informal teaching and supervision activity.

Bruce Laing continued: “We are delighted to be working with Morris & Spottiswood in the transformation of the building spaces, and it is hoped that the full first phase of the project will be completed by mid-September, allowing our students to take full advantage of the new spaces in their first semester. We are also excited about showcasing our new interior spaces to hundreds of prospective students and their families at our September and October open days this year. More importantly, we are confident that the current transformation of learning and teaching spaces will help us enhance the student experience so that students are well equipped to go out into the world and make a difference.”

David Thorn, Operations Director at Morris & Spottiswood said: “Our aim is to create places where people can thrive, and this project really seeks to deliver such spaces, so we are thrilled to be involved. All stakeholders are committed to successful delivery, and we have experienced true commitment to partnership working across our team, Designers ADP Architecture, Project Managers HD Property Consultants and the wider project delivery team.”

Professor David Stevenson, Dean of the School of Arts, Social Sciences and Management and Project Sponsor, concluded: “This is an exciting, creative project for the University which, after two years of work, will now revitalise and improve our learning environment. We are pleased that our partner Morris & Spottiswood is providing the excellent support that we need to deliver our vision and that they share our commitment to ensuring the QMU environment is a happy, productive and enjoyable place to be.”

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Register for the trottier 2024 symposium, the book natural healers really hate.

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To the conspiracy-minded alternative health practitioner, everything was great until the Flexner Report was published. Humanity was crushing diseases with herbal remedies and natural potions until 1910 when the “medical-industrial complex” came together and  “criminalized natural therapies.”  We are now afflicted by Rockefeller medicine, where ill citizens are hooked on expensive drugs that never heal them and the truth about the benefits of herbs is being hidden by paid-off politicians and academics.

This alleged fall from paradise can all be blamed on the original sin of that darn Flexner Report.

I would wager that most of the people hurling insults at this century-old book have never actually read it; I did, because I wanted to know what the fuss was all about.

The Flexner Report was commissioned because the state of medical education in the United States and Canada was dire. A young educator was hired to visit all of North America’s medical colleges and report back, which led to much-needed changes and some unfortunate consequences.

And, yes, he did have some harsh words for what he called “the unconscionable quacks.”

A medical degree  and  a free trip to Europe!

There is a reason why leeches and purging agents are now rarely used in medicine: the discipline has evolved over the millennia, and Abraham Flexner found himself at the beginning of a new and exciting era.

Medicine in the Western tradition began with Hippocrates and Galen. It began with dogma. “Facts,” Flexner wrote in his report, “had no chance if pitted against the word of the master.” Those who despise modern medicine will claim it has remained dogmatic to this day; but while practitioners can be set in their ways and new findings can linger before they are adopted, we are far from the pontifical medicine of old.

With the rapid development of anatomy in the 1500s, medicine moved from dogma to empiricism. This meant that instead of doctors simply parroting what they had been taught by the rock stars of their field, they would learn from their own experience. They would observe and they would treat accordingly. This approach was more welcoming to discovery, but it was still hard for doctors of that era to properly disentangle diseases that superficially looked the same.

What propelled the discipline forward was science. We came to realize that the human body obeys the laws of biology: it grows, reproduces itself, and dies in predictable ways, and by understanding this underlying biology, the doctor would be better able to prevent and treat disease. Scientific research fed clinical practice, and the medical student, no longer limited to watching, would  do  as well.

Like medicine, medical training itself had changed over the centuries. It started as a system of apprenticeship, where a trainee became indentured at a young age to a doctor and ran his errands. Eventually, he would get to learn the secrets of his master’s trade. In Europe, the teaching of medicine would move to the lecture halls, which were host to anatomy demonstrations, and many American students would cross the Atlantic to benefit from this enrichment in Paris or Edinburgh. It wouldn’t take long before American doctors saw a way to sprout a similar system stateside and reap its financial benefits.

They were called proprietary schools. They were privately owned, with their teachers splitting the profits among themselves. They could rent a cheap hall, get some inexpensive benches, and recruit students who didn’t even have a high school diploma. “A school that began in October,” Flexner wrote, “would graduate a class the next spring.” Their facilities were poorly stocked, with barely-existing laboratories. The money that didn’t end up in the founders’ pockets was used to make all sorts of wild promises in the advertising material. One of these medical colleges swore it would gift its graduates a trip to Europe!

Following this explosion in questionable proprietary medical schools in the mid-1800s, change was thankfully afoot, but something major was needed around which this change could crystallize.

Quality over quantity

The Flexner Report’s actual title is  Medical Education in the United States and Canada: A Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.  It was commissioned by industrialist Andrew Carnegie’s policy and research foundation. Much has been made of the report’s ties to Carnegie and to Rockefeller, whose own foundation alongside eight others would pour a lot of money to implement the solutions proposed in the Flexner Report. Flexner’s brother, Simon, was also a friend of John D. Rockefeller, Jr, and he directed the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research for more than three decades. Seen through our modern lens, this friendly alliance between medical education and capitalistic interest can trigger a fair amount of skepticism, if not outright conspiracy theories. It was in the wealthy elite’s interest to downplay the impact of social disparities on health and to promote the simpler idea that the human body was a machine whose broken parts could be mended by the right science-informed technician. But as we’ll see, the report itself did not stick to this narrow viewpoint.

Abraham Flexner, whom the Carnegie Foundation recruited for this massive work, was not a doctor; he was a teacher. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Flexner studied Greek, Latin and philosophy as an undergrad at Johns Hopkins, and this university made a profound mark on him. It would become the template for Flexner’s medical education revolution.

After teaching high school, Flexner opened his own private preparatory school, which served as a laboratory for his educational convictions. After receiving a Master’s degree in philosophy from Harvard, exploring Europe, and writing a book on American education, he was recruited by the head of the Carnegie Foundation. His mission: to tour the 150 medical schools in the United States and Canada and report back in writing on what their problems were and how to solve them. Already, the deceptive marketing of many of these schools and their deficient scientific education was known; Flexner was to document it. His report was scathing.

Flexner wrote of the dissection rooms where cadavers were as dry as tanned leather. He denounced the medical colleges claiming to have access to a hospital for their students when that was not the case. Many schools did not have full-time faculty and lacked proper laboratories. At the North Carolina Medical College, in Charlotte, Flexner was told that asking about laboratories was futile: their students were “all thumbs,” better suited to be farmers.

His year-and-a-half survey of North America resulted in a three-tiered list of medical colleges.

Sixteen were in tier one, requiring at least two years of college for admission and doing their best to meet the standard set by the Johns Hopkins Medical School. Fifty were salvageable and required of their student applicants a high school diploma. The rest, mostly found in the south of the United States, was a complete loss, in his opinion. “For the law, if enforced, would stamp them out.” (In case my colleagues are curious, he admired McGill’s own medical school, calling it “excellent” and being impressed by its anatomical and pathological museums, as well as its library. Its medical budget at the time was a mere $77,000.)

Flexner’s short-term solution to the proliferation of inadequate, for-profit medical schools was to shut them down and fund the ones that had stricter standards and that were affiliated with a university. He recommended quality over quantity, with fewer but better equipped schools graduating fewer physicians that were better trained. His influential book-length report was used to justify an influx of $154 million in the medical education system over the course of nearly two decades.

While prioritizing quality is commendable, the consequences of the Flexner Report were not all positive. Almost all women’s and historically Black medical colleges  shut down in its wake , and women were nearly eliminated from the physician workforce until the 1970s. Medical schools were consolidated in large urban centres and required more money and education to get in, which meant that middle- and upper-class white men had an easier time becoming physicians. And closing a bad medical college in the American South might have been smart in the short term, but if it was not replaced by a better school, it simply created an educational desert.

But if the Flexner Report was focused on improving  medical  education, why are so many homeopaths and naturopaths mad about it?

Made-up minds

In chapter 10 of his report, Flexner goes for the jugular of what he calls the “medical sects.” Those were competing philosophies of medicine, like homeopathy, osteopathy, and eclectic medicine (a plant-based approach). Flexner correctly observes that unlike the doctor who wants facts and not dogma, “the sectarian […] begins with his mind made up.” He denounces the contradiction in many of the best sectarian colleges, where students underwent two years of chemistry, biology, and physics, before entering clinical training and suddenly being introduced to a pseudoscientific principle that contradicted what they had just learned.

Flexner was not single-handedly responsible for shutting these colleges down. In the ten years before the publication of his report, the 22 homeopathic colleges in the U.S. were trimmed down to 15. Much like the scientific revolution changing medicine, the Flexner Report did not begin the transformation but simply galvanized it.

Yet, Flexner, perceived as the hatchet man that tore down much of the medical education infrastructure, has become a lightning rod for misconceptions and bad arguments. He is sometimes accused of having denigrated the value of public health, which is simply false. In his report he writes of bad environmental conditions that breed disease, such as a contaminated water and food supply. The good doctor’s role, he writes on page 68, “is equally to heal the sick and to protect the well. The public health laboratory belongs, then, under the wing of the medical school.” To make the point even clearer, Flexner notes that “the physician’s function is fast becoming social and preventive, rather than individual and curative.”

And while a hyperfocus on science as the answer to medical problems can lead to inhumane treatment (and certainly had a role to play in eugenics and unconscionable medical experiments like Tuskegee’s), Flexner understood the importance of care. His ideal doctor required “insight and sympathy” in order to heal. That priority may have gotten lost in the implementation of his plan, but it is present in the report, black on white.

When the sectarians he condemns criticize his report, they often claim that he transformed medicine from a holistic view of the entire body into a myopic practice that only focused on broken body parts. This is a convenient argument for them. As scientific research nourished clinical practice, our body of medical knowledge grew, forcing doctors to specialize. But there is no real growth in so-called alternative medicine. There is no  need  to specialize when you believe there is only one true cause to all diseases. Whether it’s an alleged chiropractic subluxation or a blockage of the supposed life force called qi, it’s just an obstruction. All these practitioners need to do is find the source of the blockage and declog the pipe, much like a plumber. As Flexner pointed out, though, this is not science but dogma masquerading as knowledge.

As for the loss of holism in medicine, it still exists in family medicine, and especially in group practices, where integrating knowledge from specialties is commonplace. But given the incredible amount of knowledge generated in scientific medicine, it is absurd to expect every doctor to know everything.

The Flexner Report of 1910 was an imperfect catalyst that helped move medicine into its science-informed era. It would take many more decades, though, before the randomized controlled clinical trial was adopted as a gold standard for determining the worth of a treatment or preventative. The report also exacerbated inequalities in access to medical education in an attempt to reward the most rigorous institutions. Nonetheless, it argued that the best place for medical education was not in a privately owned and poorly regulated makeshift school but in a university, where foundational research could provide new solutions to the healer.

The kind of quackery that Flexner decried has not really gone away, despite what he predicted, and its practices certainly have not been criminalized.  Osteopathy  raised its standards in the United States and became, for all intents and purposes, equivalent to medicine. Homeopathic colleges are rare but  their hyperdiluted concoctions  are still widely available. Some dubious professions, like naturopaths, have acquired an unearned legitimacy in some states and provinces, and the concept of integrative medicine—of adding junk practices to actual medicine to get some sort of best of both worlds—has unfortunately made  massive strides in academia .

The battle against medical sectarianism has not been won. There is a lot of work left to do.

Take-home message: - The Flexner Report, published in 1910, crystallized a revolution in North America toward teaching a type of medicine that was strongly influenced by scientific discoveries - The claim that Flexner downplayed the importance of public health and preventive medicine in his report because he was working for the Carnegie Foundation is simply false - The claim that medicine stopped treating the whole person after the Flexner Report came out but that natural healers still do is false: family medicine is holistic; medical specialties exist because of our increased knowledge; and natural healing practices have no need to specialize since they often believe there is one true cause to every disease, which is wrong

@CrackedScience

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