RGU is on the southwest edge of Aberdeen. Its campus at Garthdee has a view of a city that has been shaped by oil as well as education. The buildings work and are modern in the way that institutions become modern after being rebuilt over and over again for decades. The place isn’t very fancy. In fact, that makes sense for a university that has always focused on what works rather than what impresses.
The story starts not with a scholar but with a businessman. Robert Gordon made a lot of money trading in the Baltic and then moved back to Aberdeen around 1720. He left behind plans for a hospital where poor kids could get a basic education. He died before the door opened. For almost twenty years after Robert Gordon died, the hospital didn’t have its first students until 1750. Building a research university on this kind of history is a strange idea, but RGU has always been based on strange, slow progress that builds over time.
During the 1800s, the institution changed and merged many times, taking in mechanics’ institutes, technical schools, and art colleges to make something that wasn’t so much a single place as a patchwork of working-class ambition. When it first opened in 1824, the Aberdeen Mechanic’s Institution let people who worked during the day take classes in chemistry, navigation, and bookkeeping in the evening. Evening classes, adults who are tired, and practical subjects are all things that feel like RGU has never quite let go of its institutional DNA. It probably depends on who you ask if that’s a strength or a weakness.
By 1910, the part of the school that taught adults had split off from the day school and was now called Robert Gordon’s Technical College. In the 1920s and 1930s, it had engineering, pharmacy, chemistry, and navigation schools. It got students ready for degrees from other schools, first the University of Aberdeen and then the University of London. It did the same work as universities, but didn’t have the title. The gap was filled when the Further and Higher Education Act made the school a full university in 1992. There’s a quiet satisfaction in that timeline—nearly 250 years of education before authorities finally caught up.
It took some time for the Garthdee campus to come together. In 1955, the architect Tom Scott Sutherland gave the land and a house there. In 1966, Gray’s School of Art opened. By 2013, everything was finally in one place, and the Sir Ian Wood building opened that year. It was officially opened in 2015. Most likely, no one planned for the consolidation to take so long. Also, that feels very RGU.
The close ties between RGU and the North Sea oil industry were what made the company famous, especially after the 1970s. Aberdeen became Europe’s offshore energy capital, and the university was ready to serve it by teaching engineering, safety, and survival skills in the water. It’s hard to say enough about how much that changed the institution’s identity. Somehow, the university seemed to understand, maybe better than most, that businesses and schools should talk to each other.
That makes the last few years even more painful to watch. In March 2024, RGU announced a plan for departments like digital marketing, journalism, and hospitality to let employees go if they wanted to. Vice-chancellor Steve Olivier said that the number of international students was going down and costs were going up. A little over 130 employees left. It was announced in November 2024 that another 135 jobs would be lost. Unison said they didn’t like how the process was handled and were worried about how open it was and the decision to hold consultations over Christmas and New Year. Liam Kerr, an MSP from the area, called it “a hammer blow to the future of our young people.” By March 2025, the Educational Institute of Scotland had voted to go on strike, and Andrea Bradley, the group’s general secretary, called the layoffs “alarming.”
It’s still not clear if the cuts will help the university reach its goals. Olivier says that the downsizing is necessary for the business to stay in business in the long term. That could very well be true. Universities all over the UK are under the same kinds of stress. The number of international students has dropped since visa rules changed, and funding models that used to work pretty well are now having trouble. This isn’t just RGU’s problem. Even though the change is part of a bigger trend, it still feels very sudden on the ground.
What’s important to hold on to through all of this is what the institution stands for. Robert Gordon had no plans to build a college. So he could give poor kids a place to stay. That practical, grounded, and Aberdeen-specific drive has been around for 300 years, through reform, merger, restructuring, and reinvention. The institution might be able to get back on its feet. It’s also possible that the current chaos is the start of something bigger and longer-lasting. The Garthdee campus is still open for business for now. People keep coming to work and study in Aberdeen, and the city has always been waiting to see what happens next.
