SNP to offer free university for all

Published on Saturday 11 December 2010 16:03

SNP ministers are preparing to go into next year's election with a controversial pledge of "free" university education for all Scots, in contrast to plans to make English students pay thousands of pounds for their degree.

• Students' Associations in Scotland have continually called for free education

Sources close to Education Secretary Mike Russell have described any student payment by Scots as "increasingly irrelevant" to their own planned reforms of Scotland's university sector and are instead suggesting that higher education north of the border should be funded entirely from general taxation.

Meanwhile, English students studying in Scotland are likely to face a massive increase in their current 1,800 annual payments as Scottish ministers move to prevent a cross-Border rush of undergraduates trying to escape the new charges in England.

The SNP stance is certain to add to growing resentment in England over the cost of university education. The Con-Lib Coalition voted last week to shift almost all the burden of student finance from the taxpayer onto graduates, with average fees of around 7,500 a year to be introduced by 2012, repayable when they reach annual earnings of 21,000.

This week, the SNP Government will publish a green paper on university funding in Scotland. Following the English reforms, Scottish Government officials say that fears over a huge funding gap between England and Scotland have been over-blown, and that the pressure for a graduate repayments or deferred fee system is therefore not as pressing. The SNP abolished repayments for graduates in Scotland in 2007.

• Kenny Farquharson: Action is needed now on Scots universities

A source close to Russell said last night: "The Scottish budget has been cut and will be under real pressure for years to come. There isn't a silver bullet for this but there is a whole range of different options that can be brought together to form a solution.There is no question that a graduate contribution is one option but it's not the only solution."

Refusing to implement graduate repayments of tuition fees would fly in the face of the advice of the SNP's own Council of Economic Advisers which said on Friday that some form of charge was necessary to sustain universities in the future.

Higher education chiefs in Scotland said they were deeply sceptical about any plan to make do without graduate contributions in some form. It comes as their taxpayer-funded budget is about to be slashed from next April. Current funding will go down from 989 million to 926m, while capital funding for higher and further education will fall from 209m to just 91m.Alastair Sim, director of Universities Scotland warned last night: "I can't think of a credible situation where you can sustain the quality of university education without being able to lever in some kind of supplementary external contribution."

Sim added that, in the light of the English decision to increase the cap on fees to 9,000, ministers would also have to increase the fee paid by English students who want to attend Scottish universities. "The cross border flow is one that has to be managed," he said.