Exclusive:Crisis-hit university in line for emergency funding from Scottish Government body

New SFC boss vows to ‘look really carefully’ at any request to help cash-strapped institution ‘survive and thrive’

Emergency funding is expected to be made available to ensure a stricken Scottish university can “survive and thrive”, it can be revealed.

The new chief executive of the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) confirmed public money could be offered to help Dundee University deliver its recovery plan.

The University of Dundee | Lisa Ferguson

Francesca Osowska raised the prospect in an exclusive interview with The Scotsman, vowing to “look really carefully” at any request from the institution to assist it through this “very difficult period”.

She also revealed her officials do not believe any other Scottish universities are facing the same scale of financial pressures as Dundee.

Scottish Funding Council chief executive Francesca Osowska | SFC

Iain Gillespie resigned as the university’s principal in December, only a few weeks after announcing that job cuts were inevitable to try to plug a deficit of up to £30 million.

Since then, staff have voted for strike action and bosses have ordered an independent investigation into what went wrong.

Ms Osowska spoke to The Scotsman just six days into her new job, having joined the SFC from her previous role as chief executive of the NatureScot agency.

Asked if she believed Dundee University would survive, she did not hesitate before responding: “Yes, I do.”

Bosses at the institution are working on a recovery plan, including details on the proposed reduction in the university’s workforce. Severance schemes would involve upfront costs.

Ms Osowska said: “Once they have developed that [recovery plan], then the funding council stands ready to work on whatever aspects of that they need us to work on. So we, as an organisation, will do everything we can to help this institution get through this very difficult period.”

Asked if the SFC had the tools required to help the university, Ms Osowska said: “Let’s see what is on the table in terms of the financial recovery plan that Dundee offer.

“When I say we stand ready to support, we stand ready to support not just with our expertise, which I think is probably one of our key calling cards, but if there is a financial ask, we will look really carefully at that. We want this institution to survive and thrive.”

Pressed on whether significant public funding could be made available, she said: “There could be. This is a ‘could’. I would want to stress it is very much a ‘could’.

“You said ‘significant’, I just said ‘some’. Because we don’t know. We won’t have the financial recovery plan for a little while yet, probably for another couple of weeks.

“And at that point we will sit down with them and we will work through with the senior team in Dundee University, not just about the financial ask, and there may well be a financial ask. But the other part - and the part I would really want to see - is what is the long-term plan to financially recover?

“We know that this institution has been hit by a decrease in the number of overseas students, by some of its cost base increasing. How does Dundee University correct some of that in the longer term?

“So it is not just about, you know, on such and such a day in 2025 the institution needs this amount of money. Some of it might not be about financial support per se, but about how we work with them to provide the funding we do in a more phased way. That might be helpful to them.”

The comments come after First Minister John Swinney told The Scotsman he was not able to personally step in and save Dundee University.

“I am very worried about the situation there and worried for the staff who are having an anxious time,” he said. Mr Swinney added: “I know the funding council is actively engaging with the university on these issues and they will advise me on the impact of the situation.”

Ms Osowska, whose previous roles include overseeing the 2014 Commonwealth Games for the Scottish Government and serving as principal private secretary to first minister Alex Salmond from 2007 to 2009, said she was not paying attention to “chat” in the sector about the reasons for Dundee’s woes.

She said: “There will need to be some lessons learned, but at the moment I don’t think it is the time for idle gossip and finger pointing. Let’s deal with the situation and support this really excellent institution into a new phase.

“We know Dundee as a whole has had a bit of a resurgence in the recent past, and I think part of that is because of the strength of its university.

“Yes, we know there are issues and we will support Dundee with these issues. But let’s remember that it is a strong institution that has provided really good outcomes for learners, and continues to offer them really high-quality provision.”

Dundee University is not the only higher education institution in the UK to be facing financial challenges. Cardiff University just announced it was axing 400 jobs, while voluntary redundancy schemes are running at Edinburgh University and Robert Gordon University, among others.

Ms Osowska said she had been using her first days in the job to ascertain whether there is any risk of another other Scottish institution falling into a crisis similar to Dundee.

“If the question is to me ‘do you think there is another Dundee out there?’, I don’t think there is,” she said.

“But these are autonomous institutions with their own governance and we have to take the information they provide to us absolutely on face value, which we do.”

Last year, Aberdeen University could not guarantee it would be able to continue as a “going concern” as a result of the challenges it faced, but it has since stabilised after identifying more than £18m in savings.

“I think that is an interesting example,” said Ms Osowska. “Aberdeen recognised the challenges coming down the track and it took action and is now back on the way to financial health.

“And I would actually say, as difficult as it was for that institution at the time, that was probably quite a good example of the governance within Aberdeen University working to correct a difficult situation.”

On Dundee, the new chief executive said she was “confident” the SFC had engaged in the right way, at the right level, although there will be “lessons to be learned on both sides” in terms of “flows of information”.