University funding crisis needs campaigning socialist solutions
Oisin Duncan
Following the Scottish government’s announcement in January that more than 1,000 funded university places for Scottish students would be cut, the Herald newspaper has unearthed several ominous findings about the funding gap widening in Scottish universities.
Since the COVID pandemic, several universities have reported black holes in their budgets which has led to vicious cuts and short-sighted funding models. For example, the University of St. Andrew’s announced a £25 million gap in 2020.
Recent figures from the Herald also reveal that 73% of the same university’s student body came from outside Scotland, meaning that they could charge £9,250 to students from other parts of the UK, and many times over that amount to students from overseas.
This trend is replicated across the Scottish university sector; despite making up less than 30% of all enrolments in 2022/23 (the last year accurate data is available). Students from outside the UK paid 73% of the tuition fees total.
The danger is clear; what happens when non-UK students stop coming and paying much higher fees than their Scottish counterparts?
The answer is a yawning chasm in many universities’ finances, and already representatives from Universities Scotland, the education bosses’ mouthpiece, are trying to put pressure on the Scottish government.
This organisation was quoted in the Herald as saying “The sector really thinks that it’s very unhelpful to be in a binary ‘free vs fee’ conversation and that isn’t what the sector is discussing.”
The wording here is telling, with fees only floated (for now) as part of a funding solution. Particularly as the economic pressures on the Scottish government to roll back some of their most popular concessions mounts, SNP politicians will be leant on to make the ‘hard choices’ needed to balance Scottish capitalism’s books.
tuition fee hikes
The Westminster government is already discussing raising tuition fees in England, as Starmer and Reeves continue their New Labour Mark 2 agenda.
If they push this through, the SNP will face mounting pressure to pull off something similar. However the return of tuition fees in Scotland would be politically explosive and likely lead to a mass movement of youth so the SNP are extremely wary.
Yet the university funding gap should be addressed by fully publicly funding free education. This could be done by taking the wealth off the super rich and big business through a programme of socialist nationalisation of major parts of the economy and running universities democratically.
Privatisation and PFI/PPP must be ended in education with contracts ripped up and all services brought back in house.
Exorbitant salaries of vice-chancellors are a growing scandal. The need to divert funds from vanity construction projects to providing quality teaching, and dealing with the staffing and pay disputes the UCU and other campus unions continue to fight on is also crucial.
money is there
The money is there to provide quality education to all from cradle to grave without charging extortionate fees for it. As always under capitalism, it simply isn’t in the right place to allow for this.
Ultimately, privatisation and marketisation has created this mess, and the real solution is a socialist programme for education.
That means trade unions and genuine students’ unions on campus should be in control, drawing up a democratic plan to address funding shortfalls and demanding more public funding where necessary.
It means kicking out the arms dealers and fossil fuel companies who launder their money through the university sector, and it means eliminating tuition fees for all students and replacing loans with grants so they can fully focus on their education.
