Today, Tuesday 10 November, Universities Scotland have published their 2027/28 Scottish Government budget submission ‘narrowing the gap: funding Scotland’s university sector’. The recently published Funding Gap Analysis of Scotland’s University Sector, identified acute, structural weaknesses within the current university funding model, including a £200m funding gap.
Following the publication of the funding gap analysis, this year, Universities Scotland’s key asks of the Scottish Government in its budget process are;
- Arrest the decline in core funding
- increase SFC’s Higher Education Resource budget by 5% in real terms; and
- increase SFC’s Higher Education Capital budget by 9% in real terms.
- Empower reform
- provide access to affordable borrowing through a University Capital Loans Scheme, using Financial Transactions or other means, to protect the future operability of the university estate and other essential infrastructure, reduce climate impact, and enhance the sector’s physical contribution to diverse local places; and
- enable the Scottish Funding Council to develop a more strategic, longer term approach to supporting sector transformation, by creating a multiyear University Transformation Fund, and committing substantial new investment to the first year.
Commenting on Universities Scotland’s budget submission, Convener Professor James Miller said;
“The Scottish Government has already accepted that a significant university funding gap exists. The question now is whether budget decisions will follow evidence. The December budget cannot solve every problem. It can however avoid making a known problem worse.
“Allowing the funding gap to grow would not simply create difficulties for universities. It would make the eventual solutions more expensive, more disruptive and more difficult to deliver. This is not a sector pleading for special treatment. It is a case for national investment.”
The Scottish Government budget will take place on Thursday 3 December.