Research funding high on list of universities’ fears

● There are dark clouds on the horizon for a sector heavily reliant on benefits of EU membership

Of the many areas of Scottish life that stand to be affected by the UK’S withdrawal from the European Union, few have been more vocal in their apprehension than the universities and higher education sector.

Even before the triggering of Article 50 and the onset of tortuous and interminable Brexit negotiations, Universities Scotland, representing 19 higher education institutions, lost no time in setting out its concerns and priorities.

The body, one of Scotland’s most powerful spending lobbies, did not openly campaign for a “Remain” vote, but its anxieties were amply evident. It declared that it wanted Scotland “to be as open as possible to continued close relationships with our European neighbours, as well as being open to the wider world”. And in particular it insisted that EU students to be able to come to Scotland without visa restrictions.

It is as well that Universities Scotland should be so vocal and persistent in its concerns from the outset. EU staff account for 11 per cent of all staff in Scotland’s higher education institutions (4,595). This rises to 17 per cent of academic staff (3,280) and almost a quarter (24.8 per cent) of researchonly staff (1,510). Student numbers are also critical. There are more than 13,450 EU undergraduates in Scottish higher education and EU students account for 16 per cent of postgraduate research students.

The number of students in Scotland using Erasmus (the European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students – an EU funded programme that organises student exchanges) for study and/or work has grown by 50 per cent over the last seven years to more than 2,000.

And then there is research funding: Scottish HEIS received £94 million of such funding from EU sources in 2014-15, accounting for 9.4 per cent of all research funding.

Little wonder that Scotland’s higher education sector has been following Brexit with anxiety. If EU students are included in the same process as international students after Brexit, Universities Scotland Convener Andrea Nolan said she was “concerned on many levels. Scotland would lose out. The systems we have for accepting international students in are very rigorous, quite bureaucratic… to apply [international student systems] to EU students, would be a huge additional cost and administrative burden on to the HE sector… It is a huge additional cost and our EU student population would probably decline.”

Another problem would be fees. EU students would lose their ‘home’ status, which grants them the right to pay the same fees as Scottish students, and would have to pay the much higher international fees. “In Europe there are many countries that don’t charge fees – for example Germany. If we charge fees, we would be in competition. I would imagine that’s where they would choose to study.”

The college sector is also concerned about loss of enrolments and EU funding – such as funding for “employability training”, which Colleges Scotland director of sector policy Andrew Witty said help over 4,000 full time students to get back into the workforce.

Now the Brexit negotiations have still to bite down on the fine granular detail of the UK’S terms of exit. Two years on from the referendum vote we are little the wiser as to what the final outcome will be. And it is quite possible a general election or second referendum – possibly both – could be held before the March 2019 exit date.

Att he same time there are other fundamental concerns pressing on the higher education sector in danger of being neglected amid the intense political concentration on Brexit.

Not least of these is the growing incidence of graduate unemployment (or under employment) and the impact this is having on the perceived value of university qualifications.

Despite a tripling in the number of university graduates since the 1980s, many UK employers have been struggling to find qualified job applicants, especially in Stem (science,

“Scottish HEIS received £94m from EU sources in 201415, accounting for 9.4 per cent of all research funding”

technology, engineering and maths) subjects, and have increasingly been forced to recruit from abroad to fill their more skilled positions.

As for university students, a massive surplus of graduates flooding on to the jobs market has made it increasingly difficult for them to find the graduate jobs they were as good as promised by varsity marketing brochures.

According to authors David Craig and Hugh Openshaw in a recent study, in one year, there were more than 15,000 psychology graduates but only 720 training places available. Similarly, a typical forensic science job may have over 1,000 applicants.

One police chief described forensic science degrees as “a savage waste of young people’s time and parents’ money”. More than one in ten childminders now have degrees, as do one in six call-centre staff and about one in four air cabin crew and theme park attendants. However, while detailed Brexit negotiations have still to be completed, there has been some progress in allying the more serious concerns expressed by Universities Scotland.

The Scottish Government was the first devolved administration to pledge that it would continue to pay the same fees and receive the same treatment at Scottish universities as students from the UK to the 2019-20 academic year.

And for some there may be gains for Scottish students. In a Fabian paper earlier this year on policy issues for further and higher education, Jim Gallagher and Lucy Hunter Blackburn assessed the impact of Brexit. Their chief concern is to ensure fair access to further and higher education for all students in Scotland regardless of their social and economic position.

While the Scottish Government has agreed a target that by 2030 students from the 20 per cent most deprived backgrounds should represent 20 per cent of entrants to higher education, recent data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) indicate that only 10 per cent of 18-year olds from these areas entered full-time firstdegree courses in Scottish universities in 2016.

How might Brexit impact on this? It could, the paper suggests, provide additional funding to increase the number of university places for Scottish students.

This is because Scotland is currently required to provide “free” higher education for around 14,000 EU students who study in Scottish HEIS at a cost of around £100m per annum.

“If the UK ceases to be a member of the EU,” say the authors, “Scotland will no longer have this obligation, and this funding could be used to increase funding for Scottish domiciled students.” They say the need to continue to provide ring-fenced additional funding for places for students from the most disadvantaged areas should be recognised as a policy priority. “Funding which may be saved post Brexit,” they add, “when there is no longer an obligation to provide free education for EU students should be ring fenced to support this policy.”

This could provide a silver lining to what otherwise has been a dark cloud for the sector.

“There are other fundamental concerns pressing on the higher education sector”