Access to Scottish universities was probably more socially open than in contemporary England, Germany or France. Attendance was less expensive and the student body more representative of society as a whole.R. A. Houston, Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity: Illiteracy and Society in Scotland and Northern England, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), , p. 245. Humbler students were aided by a system of bursaries established for the training of the clergy. In this period residence became divorced from the colleges and students were able to live much more cheaply and largely unsupervised, at home, with friends or in lodgings in the university towns. The system was flexible and the curriculum became a modern philosophical and scientific one, in keeping with contemporary needs for improvement and progress. Scotland reaped the intellectual benefits of this system in its contribution to the European Enlightenment.A. Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World (London: Crown Publishing Group, 2001), .
