Professor James Miller, Universities Scotland Convener and Principal of the University of the West of Scotland has written a piece for The Herald, discussing out Scottish Government budget submission for 2027/28 and why it is important to narrow the university funding gap.
Scotland’s universities did not arrive at their current financial challenges overnight. For more than a decade, the gap between what universities are expected to deliver and the public funding available to support them has steadily widened. Costs have risen. Expectations have increased. Yet investment has failed to keep pace. The result is a growing structural pressure on the institutions that educate our workforce, power innovation, support public services and contribute billions to Scotland’s economy
For years, the debate centred on whether there was a problem. That debate is now over.
A significant breakthrough came when the Scottish Government and Scotland’s universities agreed to establish what has become the Future Framework: a joint process to consider how Scotland can sustain a world-class higher education system for the decades ahead. The First Minister’s support for that approach was pivotal, as was the willingness of both the Government and the sector to engage seriously with the challenges facing higher education and to seek solutions together. Support also emerged across party lines, while Graeme Dey, then Minister for Higher Education, was prepared to acknowledge publicly what many had long recognised privately: Scotland’s universities face a structural funding challenge that will continue to grow if left unaddressed.
The conclusion from the first output of this process was stark. The joint analysis reported that there is a funding gap of at least £288 million in the teaching of Scottish-domiciled undergraduate students, alongside wider pressures in research, innovation and infrastructure. Just as importantly, both parties accepted that these challenges are structural, not temporary.
That matters because public policy works best when decisions are grounded in evidence. We now have something that has too often been missing from discussions about higher education: a shared diagnosis.
But diagnoses alone solve nothing.
The December Scottish Budget will provide the first real test of whether the conclusions reached through the Future Framework are to be treated as serious evidence or simply as an interesting contribution to debate.
No one expects a single Budget to resolve problems that have developed over many years. Ministers face difficult choices and competing demands across public services. Universities understand that reality.
It would be much harder to understand why a Government that has jointly recognised a substantial funding shortfall would preside over decisions that make that shortfall even larger.
The immediate ask is therefore a reasonable one. While the Future Framework continues its work on long-term reform, the Budget should ensure that the funding gap already identified by government and universities does not widen further. Anything less risks undermining the very process both parties have invested so much effort in creating.
Allowing the 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. It would weaken institutions that Scotland depends upon for skills, research, innovation and economic growth. And it would send a troubling signal about the value placed on one of the country’s greatest strategic assets.
This is not a sector pleading for special treatment. It is a national investment case.
Scotland’s universities educate the nurses, teachers, engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs and business leaders on whom the country’s future prosperity depends. They attract investment, drive productivity, support employers and generate opportunity in every part of the nation. For a government that has rightly placed economic growth at the heart of its agenda, we are clear that investment in Scotland’s universities is a strategic investment in Scotland’s long-term success.
That is why the decision facing ministers is ultimately straightforward. The Scottish Government has already accepted that a significant funding gap exists. The evidence has been examined. The conclusions have been reached. The challenge has been acknowledged.
The question now is whether budget decisions will follow evidence.
Over the past year, government and universities have achieved something valuable. They have moved beyond disagreement and established a partnership focused on securing the long-term future of Scottish higher education. The First Minister deserves credit for supporting that process. The measure of its success will not be the publication of reports or the convening of discussions. It will be whether the decisions that follow are consistent with the realities that have been jointly identified.
The Future Framework is a shared endeavour. Universities must embrace change, and that work is well underway, simultaneously, government must provide the conditions that make successful change possible.
The December Budget cannot solve every problem. It can however avoid making a known problem worse.
Having jointly recognised the gap, Scotland should not now choose to widen it.