During the Holyrood elections in May there was an admission by all political parties that Higher Education in Scotland was underfunded by comparison with Universities south of the border. The gravity of the issue has been exacerbated by the revelation of the differences in the size of the gap in funding between Scottish Universities and the SNP. The SNP claim was that by 2014/15 the annual gap could be just over £93 million. However official estimates from the Office of Fair Access show the gap almost three times higher than the SNP claim, at £268 million.
The SNP solution to this was to propose to charge higher fees to applicants residing in England. Now in government again, the SNP's progress in closing the gap presents two threats to our two Universities in the City.
Firstly, the new much higher fees in Scotland for students from England will not be introduced until academic year 2012/13 so that there is no top up funding for our Universities until Autumn 2012 at the earliest. In other words another year with a level of funding that the government in Holyrood have already admitted is not enough. This will lead to more damaging cuts.
Secondly, the slow pace at which SNP government ministers are introducing these changes means that it likely that the new regulations to sanction the fee changes will not be in place until November this year. By that time, many applicants will have already made their choices for University entrance in 2012/13 and sent off their UCAS forms. I am concerned that, many applicants and their parental financial sponsors may well be put off by the uncertainly that will be created by not knowing what fees will be charged if they were to apply to any university in Scotland.
This SNP electoral promise is now seen through as a slight of hand conjuring up money where none really exists, at least for the next year or so. This neglect is quietly undermining our Universities. As two of our larger employers in the city this has serious implications for the Dundee economy; when our Universities catch a cold the rest of the Dundee economy sneezes.