Briefings & Evidence

Universities Scotland submission to the Advisory Group on Economic Recovery

Universities Scotland responded to a call for evidence from the Scottish Government’s Advisory Group on Economic Recovery, the body providing expert advice on Scotland’s economic recovery from COVID-19. The Group will bring forward solutions to enable a swift economic recovery and one that also ensures the Scottish economy emerges from the pandemic stronger and more resilient.

Our submission sets out a number of ideas and adaptations which, taken with higher education’s substantial continuing impacts, will make a major contribution to economic recovery. We see value in particular in:

  • collaborative research to address key post-pandemic issues for society and the economy;
  • new / enhanced ways of stimulating university-business collaboration to enable business to emerge stronger from the post-COVID recession, making full use of resources available at the UK level.
  • retaining and developing peoples’ talents during and beyond a recession, through helping graduates to develop further/ specialised skills to succeed in the post-COVID labour market;
  • and ‘building back better’ for a sustainable sector, enhanced by partnerships across the private, public and third sectors.

You can read the full submission here.