HIGHER EDUCATION has become one of the major issues of this year’s Holyrood election campaign, as the SNP and Scottish Labour battle it out to form the next Scottish Government.

Both parties, along with the Scottish Liberal Democrats and Scottish Green Party, have signed up to the NUS Scotland campaign Reclaim your Voice, which advocates improvement of student financial support and the protection of both graduate numbers and college places. Crucially for students, the campaign also calls for the ruling out of tuition fees and is described by the NUS as calling on candidates standing for election to “go beyond election promises” and make “cast-iron commitments to students”.

The support for the campaign of four of the five main parties at Holyrood has been welcomed by outgoing NUS Scotland president Liam Burns, who said, “Scottish parties are showing that they are willing to priorities education at this time, choosing a different path to what we’ve seen in the rest of the UK.”

Burns added, “students in Scotland will not tolerate the betrayal seen in the rest of the UK.”

Mike Russell, who for two years has been the education secretary for the SNP government, said that the party wanted to ensure higher education remained available to students based on “the ability to learn, not the ability to pay.” The SNP has included a pledge of free higher education in their manifesto, along with maintaining student places, moving towards a £7,000 minimum income for students and extending council tax exemption to students between courses.

Scottish Labour has also promised not to introduce tuition fees for Scottish students. Leader Iain Gray said education was, “the single most important lever in transforming people’s lives” and that education drove “Scotland’s ability to create wealth and opportunity.” Only the Scottish Conservatives have failed to sign up to the NUS campaign, and have instead launched their manifesto by proposing tuition fees for Scottish students.

Conservative candidate for Edinburgh Central, Iain McGill, told The Student the approach was a “different but more honest line of funding”.

McGill said the Conservative proposals were necessary in order to fill the “financial black holes” and that graduate contribution would allow universities to “maintain high standards of teaching and research as well as protect student places.”

In response to the NUS and Liam Burn’s argument that tuition fees are “a choice not a necessity”, Scottish Conservatives have referred to recent publications such as the one from Glasgow University’s Centre for Public Policy for Regions, which described, “much of the current funding difficulties are being wished away through general efficiency savings”.

However, after analysis of the Scottish Conservatives’ manifesto, NUS Scotland claimed to have found a gap of between £500 million and £1.5 billion in their university spending plans, given the need to phase in any proposed charges, and the Union last week called on the Scottish Conservatives to be upfront about their figures.

Burns said, “The Scottish Conservatives have claimed they are the only party being honest with the electorate but their own figures show they are misleading the electorate, students and universities on a breathtaking scale.”

“University principals are meant to be the experts as to how to protect the sector but in actual fact some are signing up to by far the worst deal from any of the political parties.”

A number of university principals have equally rejected the possibility of maintaining both free higher education and current standards at universities, and have called upon the SNP and Labour to look at the option of a students contributing financially towards their own education. Their concerns seem to have echoed with the electorate, with only last week a poll for The Scotsman found that 65 per cent of Scots voters back some for of graduate contribution.

However, Burns has rejected the poll, citing one conducted only days earlier that cited free higher education as the third most popular policy on offer at the election.

Both Alex Salmond and Iain Gray have suggested that any resulting funding gaps between English and Scottish universities be filled with public funds.