Robert Gordon of Straloch Archbishop Spottiswoode's "History of the Church of Scotland", and translated into Latin the controversy between John Knox and Wolfram, sub-prior of St. Andrews. A critical letter of his on Scottish historians, which he addressed to the antiquarian David Buchanan, is inserted in Leyland's "Collectanea"; some of his poems have been printed in Bishop Forbes' "Funerales" (Aberdeen, 1635). Robert Gordon married in 1608, Catherine, daughter of Alexander Irvine of Lenturk, by whom he had nine sons and six daughters. He died in 1661, and was interred in the family burial place at New Machar on 6 September. A portrait of him,
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