Top British seat of learning Holyrood University has been caned for its "xenophobic" admissions procedures, writes Morag McKilty.
Holyrood , graded in the world's top 20 institutions, must try harder when it comes to letting Southerners and Sassanachs in, according to two eminent South of England schools.
The poor marks for Holyrood come after its entry policies were published yesterday. The documents show that it gives what it calls "weighting" to local applicants for its courses.
Pease Pottage College for Young Gentlemen, a fee-paying school in Sussex, claimed that 99% of its pupils were successful in gaining admission to other Universities, but that none of the 120 applicants to Holyrood had been successful.
"In the old days, Scottish Universities were only too glad to enjoy the privilege of housing the sons of the landed gentry and the military top brass", lamented Dr Bandicoot Smith, headmaster at Pease Pottage. "After a few years developing his sexual perversions and sense of superiority with us, a young gentleman would take his degree in Scotland, enjoy the grouse shooting and the salmon fishing, and marry into one of the better Scottish estates, before going off to make his way in the farther reaches of the Empire.
"Scotland, with its croft-dwelling or tenement-inhabiting peasantry and archaic tribal systems was a perfect training-ground for those heading for other primitive colonial territories like Borneo, Burma, the wilder regions of India and of course Australia.
"Holyrood has opted to bite the hand that was wont to feed it. Not only is its present policy potentially illegal, even racist, but I think you will find that Scotland will go the way of so many of these primitive economies, once the benevolent guiding hand of the English aristocrat no longer holds it above the mire of anarchy and atavism."
Dr Jocelyn Pederast-Nightingale, the head of Hussocks & Clamping School at Nidlympton, Devon, said: "Boys who have been accepted at places like Oxford and Cambridge are being rejected by Holyrood as it were out of hand this year. It is nothing short of xenophobia."
A spokesman for Holyrood University said last night: "We aim to attract the very best students from around the world. But we also want to make sure that gifted students from our locality are encouraged to apply for our sought-after courses. This is why we give a weighting to local applicants, and why the following are key components of our selection interviews and application forms:
- a detailed gaelic language test
- an examination of the applicant's knowledge of tartans
- a test in which the applicant must draw their family tartan in colour
- a test of the applicant's knowledge of malt whiskies
- an examination of the applicants knowledge of the music of Kenneth McKellar
- a test of the applicant's ability to speak gibberish to a meat pudding while dressed like Harry Lauder
- an examination of the ability to see the English as the corrupt foppish bastards they really are
- a test of the applicant's possession or commitment to acquire essential items, viz. a tam-o-shanter, a kilt, a stick like Harry Lauder's, a sporran, a claymore
- an examination of the applicant's possession or commitment to acquire a tobacco and alcohol addiction
"We are only following the path also taken by other selective universities like Harvard and Yale, who, for example, only accept morons from the stinking rich upper echelons of American so-called society on their courses", argued the spokesman, who was dressed in the tartan of the Kilvilagallochs of Tumdrae.
