STEPHEN DAISLEY: The determined plight of our universities is a salutary lesson in regards to the ruinous tradition of one thing for nothing

Someone had to say it.

Professor Sir Peter Mathieson, principal of Edinburgh University, has warned that Scottish universities are in ‘danger’ from a funding model that is ‘not sustainable’.

Professor Mathieson would know. His institution has been hit by strikes over a £140m diet of efficiency savings. Belts are being tightened across Scottish higher education, an unhappy task made all the more urgent by the financial difficulties of Dundee University, which have left the institution’s future in doubt.

The principal is not counselling a return to tuition fees across the board, but has floated a ‘graduate repayment’ which would see young professionals contributing towards the cost of their education once they are in work and earning.

Alternatively, wealthy students could be asked to pay up front.

Neither of those suggestions will endear the professor to advocates of the status quo. 

Not those parents who saw others’ offspring benefit from fee-less higher education and expect the same for their own, nor those academics who would resist the inevitable concentration of students in disciplines associated with higher earning potential as applicants shun liberal arts and social science degrees.

Yet it remains the case that he is entirely correct. The current way of doing things sees the Scottish Government cover the cost of undergraduate degree programmes for Scottish domiciled students, an annual fee which is capped at £1,820. 

Scholars from elsewhere in the UK are charged just under £10,000 per annum to attend a Scottish university.

Where the real money is made, however, is from overseas students. Their fees can be much higher. Say you wanted to study the four-year structural engineering with architecture programme at Edinburgh University. 

In 2026/27, a student from Balerno would pay nothing, a student from Blackpool £9,790, and a student from Beijing £38,900.

That makes Scottish students the least valuable of all to Scottish universities. It also makes them the most expensive to the Scottish exchequer. Which is why there is a cap on the number of domestic students Scottish universities are allowed to accept.

That is one of the hard truths about ‘free’ tuition that seldom figures in the public conversation: this is a policy that requires Scottish universities to turn away Scottish applicants in favour of wealthy foreigners.

It’s plain that robbing Peter of his place to get paid by Paul’s parents cannot continue, at least not without several Scottish universities collapsing altogether.

Professor Mathieson’s proposal of an in-work graduate contribution is eminently sensible and would give universities some financial breathing space — but only some.

Allowing institutions to levy annual fees on Scottish applicants whose parents earn in excess of a set threshold would raised a little revenue, provided the charge was still substantially lower than elsewhere in the UK.

Another tack might be to maintain the no-fees policy for degree programmes in STEM subjects and other disciplines which provide marketable knowledge and skills, while introducing fees for humanities and social science degrees.

Yes, those disciplines still have educational worth, but their enrolment figures should reflect the lesser market value of the qualifications conferred. And because literature, the arts, the classics, philosophy and literature are treasure troves of civilisational wealth, provision should be made to support students from low-income families to undertake studies in these areas where the curricula are rigorous.

This is another unpalatable truth we will have to swallow: there are too many people going to university, studying for degrees which are of limited use in gaining private sector employment, and taxpayers’ money would be better spent on colleges where students can gain practical skills to weather an increasingly volatile jobs market.

I say that as someone with one humanities and one social science degree and while both were intellectually stimulating neither has brought me any professional or financial benefit, and neither was necessary to the job I do today.

While it is undoubtedly a source of pride to see a son or daughter go off to university, we can’t run a taxpayer-funded higher education sector solely to provide parental bragging rights and Instagrammable graduation photographs. 

Universities exist to store, study, and transmit knowledge, granting entry to those most scholastically gifted regardless of income or background. 

They should be places dedicated to elitism in the very best sense of the term: unparalleled research in worthwhile disciplines, exacting teaching and challenging reading material, and the formation of first-rate professionals and formidable scholars.

For its part, the higher education sector will have to accept that being a university is not a licence to generate cash from overseas students. The reliance on international students has contributed to swelling migration numbers that have pushed the general public rightwards on immigration altogether. We need some level of immigration for skills and experience. 

We do not need unlimited influxes just because it benefits the bottom lines of universities. The country and the taxpayer come first.

Higher education costs money and the burden of the cost must be shifted away from the taxpayer to the individual and the family, with the aforementioned provisions for bright students from deprived backgrounds. 

Government should turn its attention to encouraging new parents to set up investment accounts to pay for their children’s further or higher education or to support their training or probationary terms in post-secondary employment.

I understand some will gnash their teeth while reading this. What about their children or grandchildren? Wouldn’t it be monstrously unfair to change the rules before their get to enjoy a university experience? It might seem that way, but while university can bring life-defining experiences, that is not its primary purpose.

Its primary purpose is to educate the creme de la creme in the leading disciplines and produce future leaders, entrepreneurs, creators, doctors, and teachers who have been instructed, challenged and inspired to the maximum degree possible.

Making these changes would be very difficult politically. We have become so addicted in Scotland to the culture of free, in which all that is desirable becomes an entitlement, and all that is entitled becomes the obligation of the state. However much we might wish otherwise, we are not a country capable of free universal provision of everything that might be wished for. 

We have limited resources and they must be spent wisely, fairly and to the greatest efficacy. That is not only fiscally prudent but morally just.

However much we might wish otherwise, we are not a country capable of free universal provision of everything that might be wished for. We have limited resources and they must be spent wisely, fairly and to the greatest efficacy. That is not only fiscally prudent but morally just.

In which context, this is as good a time as any to right a wrong that has festered for far too long. Back when Johann Lamont was Scottish Labour leader, she gave a brave speech about the need to dismantle the culture of free, the universal provision of taxpayer-funded goodies. 

Alas, when it comes to political speeches, ‘brave’ generally means ‘spectacularly wrecking your career by telling the truth’, and Lamont’s leadership never recovered. The SNP loved to throw the speech back in her face, but as the financial troubles of the higher education system — and much else besides — have demonstrated, she was right all along.

The state cannot do everything for everybody. It must do more for some while doing less for others, even as it asks more of one group and less of another. This is the core business of government, which is setting priorities alongside resources and coming to an ugly but workable compromise. 

The compromise that must be reached on higher education funding is a balance between academic excellence and affordability, and that balance can only be struck by confronting the limits of the state’s resources and recognising the often superior value of consumer choices in the educational marketplace.