RECTORS FROM four of Scotland’s ‘ancient’ universities have spoken out against the Scottish Government’s latest funding arrangement with the higher education sector. They argue more cash is needed to stop Scotland’s universities from lagging behind their English counterparts. 

The group, including the University of Glasgow’s Charles Kennedy and Edinburgh’s Mark Ballard, also felt that students’ voices were not being heard in the debate over how to allocate funds.

In the wake of the SNP’s scraping of the graduate endowment fee for Scottish students, there is concern that Scottish universities will struggle to raise enough money to ensure a good quality of education. English universities have the ability to raise significantly more funds through charging higher tuition fees. 

Ballard stressed that universities should remain public bodies which focus on teaching, rather than becoming private, money-spinning institutions due to a lack of public money. 

He said: “This university was founded in 1583 as the Town College by the city fathers because they recognised the importance not as a private institution but as a public institution of higher education in Scotland... This is a public institution. It’s an institution which is about improving the common will of the people of Scotland, of democratising knowledge… We need that funding and if Scottish universities are going to remain public institutions for the good of Scotland that needs to be general public funding” 

Kennedy, former leader of the Liberal Democrats in Westminster, added: “We shouldn’t drift into a Scottish tertiary education system where you know the price of everything but you begin to lose sight of the value.” The rectors, including those of the Universities of St. Andrews and Dundee, will lobby the Scottish Parliament for a better deal on student finance to ease the debt burden on students. 

The Scottish Government recently set up a consultative group called the Joint Future Thinking Task Force on Universities, which includes Vice Principles from all of Scotland’s major universities yet has little to no input from student bodies. The Task Force’s interim report was criticised by the rectors for failing to call for more funds. 

The Task Force was set up last year after the Scottish Government failed to provide Scotland’s universities with the funding that they asked for. 

Ballard and Kennedy stated that Scottish Vice Principles were not being remiss in not voicing concern since “there are things which we can say which perhaps Principles can’t”.