Duncan Macmillan: Cash crisis must not lead to art attack

Now at its 250th anniversary, the College is a success. Its classes are full and its reputation international. Not the moment to seek an assisted suicide, perhaps. But the College Governors met this week to consider just that and, as we report today, voted in favour.

Or at least that is one view of the proposal they discussed that the Art College should merge with Edinburgh University. Next week the University Court meets to deliberate on its response and is likely to follow suit.

This is not a new discussion, however. The University and the College have had close links since 1767 when the new Trustees Academy was accommodated in the University by the City which ran the University, the Toun's College, at the time.

After the Chair in Fine Art was set up in the University in 1880, the Professor taught the art students and the Fine Art Degree, set up after the War and taught jointly by the two institutions, still flourishes. Recently a similar arrangement has been set up with architecture bringing together the separate departments in College and University. The idea of a full merger has been around for 50 years, too. In the 70s a serious approach by the College to the University was rebuffed by Principal Michael Swann.

The two institutions currently see themselves as a federation, linked but not united. So why push it further? Money is tight and getting tighter. Ian Howard, the college Principal, tells me that the savings would be around 20 per cent of his budget, but the effects of tight funding are not just budgetary.

Paradoxically, because of its success, the college is in a bind. It has no room to innovate within its present funding. It can only go on doing what it is doing and so it will stagnate. Going into the university would open new horizons where things like new visual languages, infomatics and the unconventional leading edges of science are increasingly where art and science meet.

This attracts the University too. It also risks stagnation, especially in the humanities. Bring in people trained to think outside the narrow boxes of academic thought and you can hope to liven things up.

But the strangle-hold of management is the enemy of innovation. That is where the college should be very wary. Ian Howard has set down five principles. The first is that the College should keep its name and its brand. The College would keep its site and its building and within it its use of space which is far more generous than the norms in universities generally. That generosity reflects the way the College teaches, studio-based and hands-on. That too should be protected.

Within the University, the new unit called Edinburgh College of Art would incorporate Architecture, Music and Art History. Howard reckons it would then be big enough to hold its own against the imperious habits of the big money schools like medicine and science. I wonder. I would never trust management. It hates exceptions and will erode the College's autonomy.

Agreement now will just be history in ten years. All that extra space, those eccentric teaching habits, get into line! You can just hear it. Independent in name and nature, that is what gives the college its edge and why the University wants it. I would try to ride out the financial storm.

When Thatcher attacked the Universities, they rolled over and said yes, madam, please kick me again. Higher education is still suffering.It is again time to make that case. Short term financial problems shouldn't distort long term strategies.

• Duncan Macmillan is The Scotsman's art critic, a former director of the Talbot Rice Gallery and Professor Emeritus, History of Scottish Art, Edinburgh University