SNP's obsession with universal benefits, like free tuition fees and prescriptions, may be doing more harm than good – Paul Wilson

With Scottish student numbers being cut, it's time for a full and frank debate about whether universal benefits like free tuition fees should be means-tested instead

We’ve become used to universally “free” things in Scotland. Free prescriptions, free eye tests, free personal care for the elderly, free baby boxes, free bus travel for growing numbers of people. Even though the promised free things sometimes fail to materialise – free bicycles and iPads for children, anyone? – we all welcome them when we need them and they are readily available.

One such state-sponsored freebie is university tuition. In 2014, former First Minister Alex Salmond famously said “rocks would melt with the sun” before he allowed tuition fees to be “imposed” on Scotland’s students. He even went so far as to have the words inscribed on a rock at Heriot-Watt University near Edinburgh.

And so we now almost take for granted the fact that Scottish students do not have to pay fees to study at Scottish universities. But there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything comes at a price and that price is now starting to be felt in our higher education system.

In 2014, the then First Minister Alex Salmond unveiled a stone inscribed with his pledge about tuition fees at Heriot-Watt University (Picture: SWNS.com)

Starved of funding, universities have been taking in ever higher numbers of students from overseas and elsewhere in the UK in order to boost their coffers, at the expense of places for young Scots. An ever-tighter cap on the number of Scottish students has led to a situation whereby only school pupils who fall into a “widening access” category are considered for certain courses.

Many Scottish students excluded from courses

In January last year, The Scotsman revealed how applicants who attended good schools or came from less deprived areas were not being accepted to study subjects such as law, business, Japanese, philosophy and psychology at Edinburgh University. Scottish applicants assigned a widening access “flag” were being prioritised for a place while those with a “plus flag” were effectively guaranteed entry, under the university’s guidance.

To qualify for a “flag”, students had to live in an area within some of the top 40 per cent most deprived parts of Scotland or come from a low-attainment state school. “Plus flag” applicants included refugees, students who had been in care or those from the top 20 per cent most-deprived parts of the country. Caps for Scottish and European Union students, who pay no fees, are imposed by the Scottish Government, while there are no caps on the numbers of fee-paying students from overseas and the rest of the UK.

One year on, the situation has worsened to the extent that Deputy First Minister Shona Robison announced this week that at least 1,200 places for homegrown students will be cut next year. Robison, who is also Finance Secretary, told Holyrood’s Finance and Public Administration Committee the places that will be cut were funded during the pandemic using Covid money because of changes to the exams process that led to a spike in university attendance.

The number of places for Scottish students in future, she said, will be subject to discussions between the funding council and universities “in order to land in a place that is affordable and sustainable”. But asked by Conservative MSP Liz Smith whether the bleak financial picture might lead to a review of the universities’ funding model, she said: “If you’re asking me if we’re reviewing the position of free tuition, then no, that is not something we’re reviewing.”

Council services slashed

Well, perhaps it should be. The notion of ‘free stuff’ is often cited by ministers as a reason we should be grateful for the largesse of the administration at Holyrood, in stark contrast with the tight-fistedness of those in charge at Westminster. Yet nothing is really free and everything has a price. In the case of free university tuition that price is the ability of Scotland’s young people to study in Scotland.

The cost of free universal benefits is also increasingly being felt in our local authorities which are being starved of resources as public services are slashed. It is being felt in the libraries and swimming pools that now seem to be closing down at an alarming rate, and in the state of our roads, which many think are now in their worst condition in living memory.

The anger people feel in the face of such mismanagement of the nation’s finances is only intensified by the eye-watering waste of money on projects such as the ferries that are several years late and hundreds of millions of pounds over budget. It is intensified by the hundreds of millions that have been sunk into an ill-fated hydro plant and aluminium smelter in Lochaber, or the tens of millions more that have been pumped into the engineering firm BiFab in the forlorn hope it would become a major manufacturer of offshore wind turbines.

With the NHS on its knees and apparently in a state of permanent crisis, many are now questioning whether the principle of health services being free for all at the point of need should be rethought. Those who instinctively respond to such calls by invoking the sanctity of the NHS and the evils of privatisation must accept that we effectively already have a two-tier system, whereby those who can afford to go private do so while those who are not so fortunate must put up with ever-lengthening waiting times.

In Scotland, it is surely long past time for a full and frank public debate on the merits of universal free prescriptions and whether some form of means-testing might help alleviate the strain. Likewise, in education, it is surely long past time for a full and frank debate on the principle of free university tuition. Here, too, some form of means-testing could surely be introduced that would bolster universities’ coffers while freeing up much-needed spaces for Scottish students.

And, barring any unlikely return by Salmond to Bute House, no rocks need melt with the sun.