Heriot Watt U was started in 1821, but it did not get the Royal Charter until 1963. Why did it take so long?
In the 1800s there were four universities in Scotland (Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Aberdeen) and two 'mechanics institutes' (Heriot Watt, Edinburgh and Anderson's College, Glasgow) to provide Engineers for what ebcame known as the 'industrial revolution'. This situation remained for the next hundred years, with Heriot Watt and Anderson's developing into colleges of science and technology, mainly producing Engineers (all disciplines) and research scientific workers. Indeed, Anderson's changed its name to the 'College of Science and Technology' by the First World War and it became the 'Royal College of Science and Technology' (RCST) in 1922 by award from the then Prince of Wales, who kept meeting graduates from RCST in the then Empire. The universities awarded degrees and the two colleges awarded 'Associate' equivalents mainly in engineering. In the 1960s, the two colleges were designated Universities by Royal Charter; Heriot-Watt College becoming Heriot-Watt University and the Royal College becoming Strathclyde University. Interestingly, all previous Associate graduates were offered the right to transform their Associate awards into Bachelor degrees, but many of them declined, believing (correctly) that to an "Associate of Heriot Watt College" or "Associate of the RCST" had far more status in the engineering profession than a mere BSc. A few years later, Dundee (a college of St Andrews University) became a university in its own right, followed by a new university, Stirling (Braveheart country). In recent years, five new universities have been established from previous technical colleges: Napier University (Edinburgh), Paisley University(near Glasgow), Glasgow Caledonian Univeristy, Abertay University, Dundee, and Robert Gordon University (Aberdeen - it has been around since the foundation of Heriot-Watt and Anderson's). The most recent candidate college for university status is Quenn Margaret University College in Edinburgh. This rather long potted history of the evolution of universities in Britain, all of which require a Royal Charter, illustrates how our accreditation regime works.
... all four of which were founded in the 15th and 16th centuries. Interestingly, by the early 1800s, Scotland had four universities, but at the time there were only two universities in England. The third English university was founded in 1828 by Scotsmen (notably Henry Brougham). The difficulties that this third English university (labelled the "Synagogue of Satan" by some of its opponents) had in achieving a Royal Charter are legendary. In 1963 -- the date referred to by the original poster (though I think H-W received its Royal Charter in 1966) -- there were a combined total of just 113,000 students in British universities. 1963 was the year of the Robbins Report, which led to the first great expansion of higher education in Britain.
