Universities can boast numerous Noble prize winners, but nothing will put them in the popular public eye than successfully triumphing under the scrutiny of quizmaster Jeremy Paxman.

But although appearing as an equal and open test to find the UK’s smartest brains the reality is a bit different.

Put under the microscope the programme’s format is not quite as producers would have viewers believe.

Far from an open and fair contest between the cream of the country’s students, it is so heavily skewed in favour of the Oxbridge duo of Oxford and Cambridge that as a national competition it’s almost meaningless.

The series was founded in 1964 and presented by the idiosyncratic Bamber Gascoigne until 1987 when it was ditched by ITV. It was resurrected in its current form by the BBC in 1994 and has been fronted by Mr Paxman since.

After 36 contests it has been won by Oxbridge entrants on a total of 20 occasions.

A casual glance at this statistic would perhaps reinforce the established view that these two, the oldest and most renowned universities in the land, are indeed head and shoulders above the competition.

From a Scottish point of view the show has only been won by Dundee in 1982 and St Andrews a year later.

A poor show it would seem, but closer analysis would reveal they are not quite competing on a level playing field.

Oxford University can enter up to 41 teams if it wished. The reason producers give for this anomaly is that they are allowed one team for each of their individual colleges. Similarly Cambridge is allowed to potentially enter 29 separate teams.

This means for instance that Corpus Christie College, Oxford with a mere 230 undergraduates is given exactly the same opportunity to take part as the University of Glasgow with its 20,000 students.

This blatant protectionism of elitist education in the UK should be boycotted by the Scottish higher education hierarchy.

As a counter to this southern bias, Universities Scotland, as the body representing Scottish under graduate talent, should be lobbying to have a home grown competition organised along more equitable rules.

Winning this competition with all the positive PR opportunities this brings is hard enough, without having to break a BBC sponsored format that loads the entire competition in favour of the English establishment.