Scottish universities' £200 million funding gap shows why SNP must face reality about free tuition fees

Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli warns Scotland's university face 'an acute and growing financial crisis' (Picture: John Devlin) | The Scotsman

Scotland’s public services are falling apart. The police have stopped investigating some minor crimes, roads are potholed and weedy, the NHS has been reduced to a massive waiting list, and teachers suffer violence and abuse from out-of-control classrooms. So it’s really no surprise that universities are facing a financial crisis.

We knew about the problems of individual cases like Dundee. But now a comprehensive report on the economics of the sector has found that spending by universities – on the vital job of educating our young people – exceeded their income by about £200 million in one year alone.

The study was led by Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli, president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a former principal of Glasgow University. He spelled out the conclusions in no uncertain terms: “The picture it paints is bleak. Collectively, Scotland’s universities face an acute and growing financial crisis. The funding they receive – from both public and private sources – is not sufficient to sustain their core activities.”

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He said universities had seen a “persistent real-terms decline in public funding since 2016-17”, leaving the sector with an “ever-increasing reliance on other sources of income, particularly international student fees”. Unfortunately, in recent years, as overseas students have been mindlessly drawn into the row about immigration, their numbers have been falling.

This is understandable. Why would they want to come to a country where foreigners are portrayed as benefit scroungers, criminals and worse? Unfortunately, the consequences of this decline for universities’ finances have been “severe”, Muscatelli said.

Education Secretary Màiri McAllan acknowledged the need for “a sustainable model of funding”. However, she defended the SNP’s policy of free tuition, saying this meant Scottish students were “not hampered by the levels of debt we see elsewhere in the UK, and they are able to go to university based on their ability to learn and not their ability to pay”.

Free tuition is a reasonable policy – but only if the government can afford it and, quite clearly, it cannot. Are the SNP going to drive our universities to financial ruin out of a bloody-minded refusal to accept reality? Judging by the state of the NHS, probably.