Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie has called on Nicola Sturgeon to reverse £90 million cuts to colleges.
He also criticised the Scottish Government's strategy to close the gap in educational achievement between richer and poorer pupils, saying it was "years behind" a similar scheme in England.
Speaking at First Minister's Questions, he highlighted Scotland's decline in international education rankings and concerns raised by a think-tank over skills shortages.
He said: "As college funding has been cut in real terms by £90 million compared with seven years ago, wouldn't it be right for us considering all those challenges to reverse that cut in full?
"That £90 million cut from colleges has wiped out a whole sector of part-time courses, with the Royal Society of Edinburgh saying today there has been a 48% reduction in part-time students in the last eight years, and that's primarily affected women and over-25-year-olds.
"The pupil premium for schools in England has delivered real change that allows everyone no matter what their background to participate in the economy.
"The Scottish Government's attainment fund plans are years behind and £70 million short of what is required to match that proven investment."
First Minister Ms Sturgeon said the draft budget prioritises the economy and education, and includes a £750 million attainment fund to reduce the gaps between richer and poorer pupils.
She said: "Part of the Scottish attainment challenge will see £120 million go direct to schools in the form of a pupil equity fund delivering extra support to pupils that come from more deprived backgrounds, and that I think is a signal of our determination to close the attainment gap.
"We have put forward a budget that I think has the right priorities but, of course, we remain open to discussing the detail of that with any party that wishes to engage with that in a constructive way."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here