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Why do men in some universities not wear mortarboards?

Men at some universities in Ireland and the UK don't wear mortarboards when wearing academic attire, like University College and Trinity College in Dublin and St. Andrews (i think).

Rumour has it that tradition started to protest women being allowed to matriculate. Is that true? does anyone have any evidence?

Update:

Thanks jenkin, but this seems to be a much older tradition and if they were just gradually going out of fashion why do women only wear them.

In my alma mater a women friend was told she had to wear it.

1 Answer

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    It's just yet one more thing that is disappearing. When I was at grammar school in UK the masters and mistresses all wore gowns and mortarboards. This was in the early 1960s. After that, the whole education system began to fall apart. I went into teaching, and I was flabbergasted at how little the children had to know in order to pass exams. Since then, it's gone from bad to worse. I now do private coaching of university students who cannot write a coherent English sentence (spelling, grammar, syntax, punctuation) although they have somehow managed to get through their A-levels.

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