MELISSA BLOCK, host:
British Prime Minister David Cameron called yesterday a great day for our country. He was talking about the engagement announcement of Prince William and Kate Middleton. And in Scotland, the university where the couple met seized the moment to emphasize one of its selling points - the University of St. Andrews in the county of Fife, lays claim to the title of Britain's top matchmaking university.
And Stephen Magee joins us to explain why he is vice principal of external relations at St. Andrews. Welcome to the program.
Mr. STEPHEN MAGEE (Vice Principal of External Relations, University of St. Andrews): Thank you very much.
BLOCK: Why do you stake this claim, the top matchmaking university in Britain?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. MAGEE: It's interesting that you should highlight that. I think we'd like to stake the claim to being a decent institution of higher education as well.
BLOCK: Well, the claim was staked by St. Andrews yesterday, I think in a news release. It's something evidently you took credit for.
Mr. MAGEE: I suppose we've been around for almost 600 years, so a few of our graduates have married each other in that period.
BLOCK: Yeah. And I think St. Andrews has actually put a number on it, 10 percent of 5,000 graduates are currently married to each other. Ten percent.
Mr. MAGEE: Yeah.
BLOCK: Do you think that's a greater percentage than any other university?
Mr. MAGEE: You know what, I don't know if we have strong comparative figures for that, but there is a kind of - there's a nice mythology that a lot of people who subsequently get married met each other when they were undergraduates and got married subsequently in their lives.
BLOCK: And especially at St. Andrews, you think?
Mr. MAGEE: Well, because it's a rather small town and university, it's not a city, you can't disappear in the evening into anonymity. So people get to know each other really quite well. And they find a strong bond or friendship if nothing else, and some of that turns into romance and marriage.
BLOCK: You think there's not a whole lot of other distraction around?
Mr. MAGEE: Well, it's other people. We don't do nightclubs and all that sort of stuff. I don't think there's much Kentucky Fried within quite a long distance. So we have a very active social life amongst our students.
BLOCK: Well, is the royal engagement the talk of St. Andrews this week?
Mr. MAGEE: Well, you know what? It's a university. You can imagine that people dispute and argue all the time.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. MAGEE: But it's really quite interesting. I don't think I've heard quite so much unanimity. Yeah, everyone's pretty happy about it. And the town is as well.
BLOCK: I did read this, that back in 2005, which is when William and Kate both graduated from St. Andrews, the principal there at the university said to the graduates, I say this every year, you may have met your husband or wife at school.
Mr. MAGEE: Yeah. That's been said for a long time. Next year we'll be 600 years old. We're rather hoping that when they get married next year they might spend some of that celebration with us. But I think that deans of students for a very long time have been saying to parents in a very non-threatening way, do get to know each other, because some of you will be related in later life.
We have a delightful church, by the way, in which graduates are licensed to get married. But I suspect there might be a small church in London that tries to claim that honor.
BLOCK: No quiet country wedding up there in St. Andrews.
Mr. MAGEE: Well, you can hope, but I suspect not.
BLOCK: Well, Stephen Magee, thanks for talking to us today.
Mr. MAGEE: Not at all.
BLOCK: Stephen Magee is vice principal of external relations at the University of St. Andrews in the county of Fife in Scotland. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
