Principal has no idea how £9,000 fees will affect intake

THE principal of one of Scotland’s most prestigious universities has conceded he has no idea how the introduction of £9,000 tuition fees will affect student numbers.

Edinburgh University is one of only a small number of Scottish institutions that will charge students from England, Northern Ireland and Wales £9,000 a year, meaning that its four-year degrees will be the most expensive in the UK.

At the Scottish Parliament’s education committee yesterday, the university’s principal and vice-chancellor, Sir Timothy O’Shea, said it was likely that it would have to make “some revision” to the charges for future years once it had seen application figures for 2012.

With all of Scotland’s universities having declared their fees for 2012, the average is £6,841 a year. However, Edinburgh and St Andrews, which account for more than 40 per cent of the students from the rest of the UK, will charge the £9,000 maximum. When asked by MSPs how tuition fees would affect admissions, Sir Timothy said: “It’s extremely hard to predict. In our modelling we’ve looked at the possibility of up to a 20 per cent increase in our rest-of-UK students. We’ve also looked at a 20 per cent drop.

“For my own institution, the assumption made by Scottish Government is about right – we will see figures maintained – but I would not put money on that.”

He said the university would look at application figures after Easter, adding he was “quite sure” that “some revision” would need to be made to the fee structure once these had been assessed.

The committee was also addressed by Alastair Sim, director of Universities Scotland, Professor Seamus McDaid, principal of the University of the West of Scotland, and Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, principal of Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. Mr Sim denied suggestions that Scottish universities could look to replace the four-year degree structure with those lasting just three years, saying institutions were “utterly wedded” to the current system.

Representatives of Scotland’s colleges painted a bleaker picture on the back of funding cuts. Paul Little, principal and chief executive of City of Glasgow College, said: “We will have to make savings of £4.3 million over the next three years. That’s on the back of cuts we’ve just seen where 100 staff left the college. We’ll see potentially in excess of that in the next three years.”