SNP must act to help our renowned universities
Westminster may be partly to blame for falling finances but Education Secretary can’t deny it’s up to her to find solution
For all the doom and gloom about Scotland’s slide down international league tables for school performance, our higher education sector has remained a shining star of which the nation can be proud, attracting people from all over the world to pay thousands in fees that subsidise the education of our own students.
However, a storm is clearly brewing, with talk that some universities could even go bust. As the Scottish Government seeks to make budget cuts, it has confirmed that 1,200 extra places created for Scots students during the pandemic will be scrapped and there are fears that further reductions will be necessary if a £28.5 million hole in university finances is to be filled.
Questioned on the policy of free tuition, Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth admitted yesterday “it does createchallengesforouruniversities” but defended the principle and, predictably, blamed Westminster for changes to immigration rules that are discouraging overseas students. The problem is that the Scottish Government does not provide enough money per Scots student, so universities must look elsewhere for funding. If access to lucrative foreign students is being reduced, cash pressures will grow.
Gilruth may be right that Westminster’s immigration obsession is harming Scottish education, but she was wrong to claim “it’s not my responsibility as Cabinet Secretary for Education in Scotland to mop up the mess of a government elsewhere around about its approach to international students and immigration”. If forces outside the Scottish Government’s control are causing a problem, it is still her responsibility to deal with it. She cannot simply wash her hands of the situation while dogmatically continuing to defend free tuition fees for political reasonsandblamewestminster.
If the Scottish Government cannot pay universities a reasonable amount andincome from foreign students is being cut, means-testing of tuitionfee support is the least-worst option. It would let universities charge more for Scotsstudentsandpotentiallyincrease their numbers. Better to grasp the thistle now, than let higher education slide into a full-blown crisis of NHS proportions.