million+ comment: Scottish Funding Council proposals will damage prospects of working class young people
The university think-tank million+ has warned that modern universities in Scotland run the risk of losing teaching funding under proposals issued by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC). The think-tank says that the proposals are likely to damage the prospects of working class young people.
The Council was previously provided with additional funding by the Scottish Government to make up for the fact that universities in Scotland, unlike their counterparts in England, do not receive additional tuition fee income. However the bulk of this additional money has been spent on a “research pooling” initiative. The SFC now faces a shortfall and has for the first time acknowledged that the money it provides for teaching is nowhere near enough. However, in a move that has infuriated some Scottish Vice-Chancellors and Principals, the SCF has issued proposals which would reduce teaching funding for Scottish universities that have the highest proportions of students from working class backgrounds who live in Scotland.
Writing in today’s (15 October) Scottish Herald, Professor Bernard King, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Abertay Dundee says ‘The Scottish Funding Council’s proposals to redistribute the country’s teaching funds, would damage the higher education prospects of thousands of Scottish working class youngsters. If the SFC genuinely believes in diversity of mission (a phrase used repeatedly in its corporate plan), presumably it thinks that educating working class kids from poorer backgrounds is a distinctive mission of the newer universities such as Abertay. In which case, we are forced towards the conclusion that the cuts these new proposals will inflict on newer universities are part of a deliberate policy by the SFC to penalise precisely those working class Scots kids’.
Professor King also criticises the Scottish Funding Council and its executive on the grounds that it does not contain ‘a single person with experience of running a university’.
Pam Tatlow, Chief Executive of the university think-tank, million+ said “It is very disappointing that the SFC has issued proposals without any analysis as to how they might impact on access and the teaching resource available in universities which make the biggest contribution to social mobility in Scotland. It is even more surprising that the SFC should tread this path when the Scottish Government has already classified universities as the seventh key sector of the economy and will undoubtedly look to these institutions to provide new opportunities for working class students who want to improve their employment prospects with graduate qualifications’.
ENDS
Notes to editors
- million+ is a leading university think-tank, working to solve the complex problems in higher education. www.millionplus.ac.uk
- For more information and interviews please contact Pam Tatlow on 0207 7171655 or 07795 645241 or Professor Bernard King on 01382 308 452
or 7850904110