Higher education: Middle class and private school pupils pay price

Devolution came about largely because of the social and cultural vandalism wrought by Thatcherism on the fabric of former industrial communities in Scotland.

Brexit happened, principally because people in deprived communities resented the mass influx of eastern European immigrants, whom they perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be responsible for depriving them of jobs, housing and school places for their children.

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In Scotland, something significant is happening in higher education, prefacing a growing tide of opinion in favour of change that may soon become irresistible.

Supposedly ‘free’ university education, intended to benefit Scottish students from all backgrounds, appears to be doing so for comparatively fewer young people.

While demand continues to increase, opportunities have remained static, because of a cap on the number of publicly funded places for home-based students.

This is more than an esoteric statistical pattern affecting only those at the margins. Rather, it is impacting on the traditional core of university applicants from aspirational working class and lower middle-class backgrounds, as well as for those who are better off.

Because of an algorithm applied by universities to maintain a high number of paying students from outside of Scotland, if your child attends a successful state school, does well in their Highers and wants to attend a top performing university, the chances are they will be negatively affected, denied a place at the institution of their choice.

University of Edinburgh (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

It doesn’t take a PhD in pure maths to work out why this has happened. Only 55% of students attending Scottish universities are home-based, compared with 74% at institutions in England.

At some of the most prestigious and in-demand universities, such as St Andrews and Edinburgh, only 30% of undergraduates are Scottish domiciled, compared with 60% at Glasgow and Aberdeen.

While more school leavers north of the border progress to higher education than ever, the proportion failing to gain a place has doubled since 2007.

Pupils achieving five As at Higher in S5 used to be the gold standard of achievement, enough to guarantee them a place on the most demanding vocational courses, such as medicine, law and dentistry.

Now it is a standard requirement for pupils at private or successful state schools applying for some popular arts or science courses. And even then, they are by no means guaranteed a place at some universities.

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Judging from the experience of my own children, entry requirements appear to have become significantly tougher, even in the past few years.

In a spirit of full disclosure, my three children all attended the same private school in Glasgow. Five years ago, my eldest daughter attained a place at Edinburgh University to study law, after achieving five As at Higher. Two years later, her brother was denied a place on the same course, at the same university, despite achieving identical grades.

There was no explanation for his rejection and no recourse to appeal. His mother and I were naturally dumfounded because, as well as being academically in the top percentile of pupils nationally, he was a house captain, a member of the rugby First XV, a member of the debating society and a Diana Award Ambassador.

This year my youngest daughter, who is in S6, was advised not even to bother applying to Edinburgh University to study politics and social policy, despite achieving more than the required grades for the course.

While also being warned that applying to Glasgow and Strathclyde universities was ‘ambitious’, she was told that the entry requirements advertised in prospectuses and on university websites relate only to pupils from poorly performing state schools. For the rest, it seems that, no matter what grades they achieve, institutions are at liberty to offer only a brick wall and no explanation as to why they have been refused.

In common with their friends, from private and high-performing state schools, who came up against the same resistance, my children quite reasonably wondered what more they could have done to gain a place. The only conceivable answer was to have been a paying student from outside of Scotland or to have come from a poorer background.

The Scottish Government’s ambition to encourage wider access to universities was as laudable in 2007 – when it scrapped the £2000-a-year graduate endowment – as it is now.

Of course, the notion of higher education being ‘free’ is misleading, as students must fund their own living costs, which leaves them with debts often amounting to thousands of pounds after graduating.

But it does leave them significantly less encumbered by debt than their counterparts in England, many of whom must pay fees of up to £9,250 per year.

However, the Scottish Government’s commitment to maintaining a heavily funded higher education sector, along with other populist giveaways such as free prescriptions, subsidised travel and frozen council tax rates, has come at a cost.

Scots have become the most heavily taxed population in the UK – with six tax rates compared with three in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – at a time when the Scottish Government has also run up a £1.5billion black hole in the public finances.

Earlier this month, finance secretary Shona Robison announced further tax rises, with corresponding cuts to public services, including a £48.5m reduction in funding for teaching Scottish students.

Universities Scotland warned it would lead to “inescapably hard choices” next year, which are likely to include leaving some higher education teaching vacancies unfilled.

Scottish voters might be prepared to accept paying higher taxes if there was a corresponding improvement in standards of health, education and local authority services, but that has conspicuously not happened. Instead, we are getting ever closer to having Scandinavian levels of taxation with levels of public service provision more redolent of some Republican dominated US states.

A day of reckoning is approaching for Scottish higher education, when we must consider whether the current funding arrangement is fit for purpose.

There is the important issue of widening access to consider, although there is no confirmed evidence that charging fees acts as a deterrent to poorer students applying to universities.

There is also the important issue of drop-out rates – the number of Scottish students quitting university due to financial reasons has increased by 28% in the past five years – particularly those from the most deprived backgrounds, and what can be done to reduce those.

Above all, voters demand fairness and, when they feel the system is actively working against them – as with Brexit and successive Tory governments of the 1980s and 1990s – they tend to vote with their feet.