Robert Gordon University The two universities also compete annually in the Granite City Challenge which sees teams across a range of sports compete to be the best in the city. The Robert Gordon University has 2 partner schools in Switzerland: In 2010, RGU gained international attention for awarding an honorary degree to controversial American businessman Donald Trump, whose mother was from Scotland. This featured in the 2012 documentary film "You've Been Trumped" which documented the progress of the construction of Trump's golf course near Aberdeen from the point of view of local residents. In the film Dr David Kennedy, former Principal of the
Robert Gordon University future of UK higher education recommended major expansion, which led to the renaming of the institution to Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology to suggest its increasing role in higher education rather than further education. As well as new "plate-glass" universities, reforms following the report created the polytechnics in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It also created the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) to allow non-university institutions (like the polytechnics and Scottish central institutions) to run programmes that graduated students with CNAA degrees. The Institute's first CNAA degree programmes began in pharmacy in 1967, then in engineering, chemistry and physics