Universities must be free of Scottish Government shackles

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Then on Monday, the Scottish Conservatives’ finance spokeswoman, Liz Smith, accused politicians of having their “heads firmly in the sand” over tuition fees.

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Today, a reader gives an insider’s view on how Scotland’s universities can prosper.

Professor William Wardle​ of Glasgow writes:

"The calls for review and reform of university funding highlight issues which go beyond the cashflow concerns of universities. The economic future of Scotland is at stake, setting the context as the purposes of universities within a vibrant economy. It is about the nature of economic growth and the contribution higher education institutions make to the sustainability of a knowledge economy. Universities should be intellectual powerhouses, but they must also sit on economic frontiers.

In Scotland, future economic growth will require a coherent combination of:

• Leading-edge and world-class universities, defined by their ability to attract the most talented students and staff, and engage with internationally recognised research;

• A higher education sector, composed of universities and colleges, and which provides opportunity and supports aspiration and ambition as widely as possible;

• A base of skills and aptitudes across the wider population and which is internationally competitive.

Currently, we live on the edge by:

Underfunding universities, with enforced dependence on public funding leading to constraints on domestic numbers and over-promoting the gamble of international recruitment;

• Somehow confusing the dilemma of achieving social inclusion by imposing barriers to the recruitment to our universities of the best-qualified applicants because of a crude system of quotas and a postcode device. We "exile" talent to England and elsewhere, the bulk of which will not return;

• Shackling state schools to the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) and denying students the knowledge base to succeed.

Left unchallenged, these inhibitors will continue to forestall economic growth. Scotland depends on inward investment to achieve economic development, but with the characteristics outlined above, that investment will turn elsewhere. Recent experience should remind Scotland’s politicians and leaders that you cannot construct an economy based on call centres; and that dependence on manufacturing assembly will, inevitably, see that activity depart for cheaper overseas locations.

In the face of this depressing critique, how do we achieve the appropriate balance between talent production and retention, so as to attract meaningful investment? It requires allowing universities to set appropriate fees, ending the no-HE fee, fixed-rate diktat from the Scottish Government. It would put universities on their mettle: charging students fees in a competitive market, but a significant improvement on taking bulk numbers on discounted tariffs. And it would allow universities to calculate better the bias between research and teaching activity.

Universities could be mandated to sign up to access and inclusion targets, without compromising entry criteria. Release of that public funding currently absorbed by universities could go substantially to colleges, which see themselves as underfunded critically, in need of capital investment, and capable of being redefined fundamentally as the skills engine underpinning a progressive Scottish economy.

Alongside the commitment to excellence in universities and the identification of an effective vocational education strategy, re-examining the principles and outcomes of CfE would re-establish the primacy of knowledge and give employers and investors confidence in the employee platform."