Sir Andrew Cubie: Browne demands Scottish response

This a most critical month for the future both of the United Kingdom and Scotland. The findings of the UK government's Comprehensive Spending Review will be announced on 20 October. The world for many of us will seem and be very different on 21 October.

I am not a member of any political party and make no comment about the cause or proffered cures for the UK's unprecedented deficit. My engagements in London have, however, had me proximate to the Browne review team whose report about student funding and support will be published tomorrow.

The approaches to education policy in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland are diverging, but the impact of the Browne review for England will be significant for all of us in the UK. If implemented in whatever final form, English universities seem likely to benefit from the Browne review and have the ability to charge significantly enhanced fees, potentially both variably and without any annual cap. The percentage made available from such additional fee income for student support and widening participation remains uncertain, but will be significant.

Thus the prospect of both future enhanced current cash flow and greater borrowing ability for universities in England seems real. The background threat remains that if the Browne proposals fall, there will be no substitution funding for otherwise inevitable cuts which when I last spoke to David Willetts, the minister for universities and science for England, he thought would fall at 30-35 per cent for his department over the next four years.

So what does this mean for Scotland? As we do not yet know where Browne or the coalition government will settle, any answer must be hypothetic. If the Browne proposals fall and cuts are introduced, it could lead to the radical reduction of the Higher Education Funding Council for England or its abolition and a significant increase in alternative income for higher education provision. This might place Scotland at a competitive advantage. However, under our present Westminster/Holyrood settlement, because of the general level of public sector cuts the Scottish block grant will inevitably fall also significantly.

It is not for me to postulate the priorities of those in power after May 2011 in Scotland.

If, however, the trailed outcomes of Browne are implemented and the gap between the probable immediate cuts and enhanced income flows after 2012 come forward, there are significant dangers for higher education in Scotland.I have consistently over many years called for a wide ranging independent review of the funding of Scottish universities and their students for the simple reason that the outcomes of the review which carries my name from 1999, were constrained by our terms of reference. A personal frustration has been that the Scottish Graduate Endowment we proposed and which was implemented under that name, called for payment by all Scottish graduates, when their annual earnings exceeded 15,000 - it was initially 10,000 - missed a key proposition of my committee that a graduate had to be earning quite substantially before any contribution was required. Our figure was 25,000. In 1999 values, that represented income levels for many from their second or third job.

As the Graduate Endowment was abolished by the present Scottish Government when they came to power, all of this is history, bar one key point. The Scottish Graduate Endowment required a payment by all graduates, who earned above a prescribed level, to a hypothecated or dedicated fund for the benefit of students of later years from less advantaged backgrounds. The principle, therefore, of a graduate contribution was widely accepted for Scotland. Those who sought to discredit the proposition referred to the payment as a "fee".

To me the issue is simple - is a payment "up front" or delayed? I suggest the obligation to make a payment when an undergraduate has become a graduate ensures that university education remains free at the point of consumption. However, for Scotland in 2010, nomenclature remains hugely important.

My call for an independent review, has been predicated on the basis of the cost and benefit of all options including fee payment, being calculated. However, I remain opposed to a fee structure, but not to calculating what a fee structure, based on Browne or otherwise, would yield to Scotland. Because no review has been undertaken, I fear that in Scotland we are less well placed to address these issues than we should be. The call to identify a Scottish solution for higher education funding by cabinet secretary Michael Russell earlier this year was worthy, but too late. If a Green Paper is published at the end of this year, it may inform the exchanges of the political parties on the hustings in spring 2011, but not the lot of students or their universities in the timescale which impending cuts demand.

I will develop ideas beyond these in a speech to the David Hume Institute tonight, but we need now to find a more rapid way of reaching a consensus in Scotland other than through an independent review and do that beyond the political process.Significant contributors to these issues for Scotland will be present tonight. I hope that the developing thinking of the many organisations represented, as well as individual voices will be able to create a way to agree upon a set of principles or solutions for our political masters.

The principles should include:

• Making university education free at the point of consumption.

• We should avoid a debate about what is "up front" or postponed if the first principle is accepted.

• Whatever contribution for graduates is set it must not discourage participation.

• As with the Graduate Endowment there must be a relevant and not discouraging minimum level of income before a graduate is obliged to contribute.

• There needs to be a higher level of contribution from graduates on high incomes. Clearly detailed calculations need be made about potential caps on contributions.

• There needs to be clearly understood support arrangements for students from less advantaged backgrounds. There were broadly accepted principles established after the Cubie Report in regard to this. l There needs to be immediate cash advantage to the sector either from government support or through investment based on securitisation of future income flows from graduates. The lack of such immediate benefit arising from the Graduate Endowment was a justified criticism. This must be an area for immediate and effective collaboration with the Scottish financial community.

I hope with the Browne review and with potential outcomes from tonight's discussions, a clearer way forward for Scotland can be mapped. Even with an early accord it seems improbable any contribution from a proposed graduate contribution would arise before 2012-13. To avoid significant damage to the sector Scottish Government funding would require to be sustained during a migration to a new system.

We have a university community of which we can be justifiably proud. It is in Scotland's interests that in these turbulent times we seek to strengthen it. That is not achievable if we sustain the status quo.We urgently need outcomes.

• Sir Andrew Cubie, CBE, FRSE, chaired the Independent Committee of Inquiry into Student Finance and is a former chair of court at Edinburgh Napier University.