Scots students ‘ being squeezed out of university’
Warning over rise in foreign applicants
BRIGHT middle - c l ass Scots pupils are at risk of being frozen out of Scottish universities by f oreign students, higher education chiefs have warned.
Glasgow University said there was a risk Scots could be squeezed out by a growing wave of pupils from the EU.
St Andrews University said it expected the number of native Scots enrolling to fall and voiced concerns that the drive to recruit children from poorer backgrounds risked pushing out talented Scots students from better-off homes.
The f i gures undermine the SNP’s policy of providing ‘free’ higher education to Scots and come as universities seek to recruit more non-EU students, who pay up to £30,000 a year.
The warnings were voiced in ‘outcome agreements’ – a list of promises universities make in return for cash – published yesterday by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC). Glasgow Univer- sity stated: ‘We have concerns that healthy application rates from EU students will begin to reduce the number of Scottish-domiciled students.’
Record numbers of EU pupils are studying at universities in Scotland at taxpayers’ expense. The number has risen to 13,550 from 13,385 in the past year.
This has pushed the bill to an unprecedented £25.6million, up from £24.9million in the previous year. Universities in Scotland are given cash by the SFC to pay for the ‘free’ places but the overall number is strictly capped.
It is up to principals to decide how many Scots and how many EU youngsters are admitted.
When this cap is reached, feepaying students from the rest of the UK and outside the EU can still be offered places.
Last night, Glasgow University said that ‘based on current applications’ the concerns it voiced ‘ have not materialised’.
Universities Scotland, the higher education umbrella body, has previously advised that it is ‘important to stay focused on the fact that the number of Scottish students studying at Scotland’s universities is still increasing’.
St Andrews University’s outcome agreement suggested the drive to recruit poorer students, a priority of the SNP, combined with the cap on the number of Scottish students that can be recruited, could ‘disadvantage’ brighter Scots from more affluent homes.
The university said: ‘The prevailing policy is inevitably to the disadvantage of Scottish applicants with higher UCAS tariffs who wish to study at St Andrews.’
‘Tariffs’ are a form of scoring system which allocates points based on exam passes – so someone with a high tariff score is likely to have a high number of exam passes. Poorer pupils tend to have lower tariffs because often their schools do not offer Advanced Highers, according to the university.
Officials at St Andrews also said ‘due to the unexpectedly high number of Scottish entrants in 2014-15’, it was ‘ anticipated that the total number of Scottish- domiciled entrants will be significantly lower in 2015-16.’
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘Higher education in Scotland is thriving. We supported a record number of students domiciled in Scotland to go to Scottish universities last year and funded more than 1,700 additional places for people under our widening access initiative.’
‘Policy not to their
advantage’