Threat to Aberdeen University's existence a damning indictment of SNP and Tories' twin obsessions – Scotsman comment

Independence and immigration are blinding the SNP and Tories, respectively, to a serious funding crisis in universities

The University of Aberdeen was founded in 1495 and has survived more than five centuries of political turmoil – wars, emigration, recessions, the lot. However, it has now warned there were warnings of a “significant doubt over the ability of the university... to continue as a going concern”. Just let that sink in. This historic institution may cease to be a “going concern” – and not in the distant future, but the next 12 months.

Universities are fundamental building blocks of both Scotland’s economy and our wider cultural life. There should be absolutely no doubt over their future. Yet Aberdeen is far from the only university in trouble. In March, the outgoing director of Universities Scotland, Alastair Sim, warned that without a serious conversation about university funding “we are at risk of severe degradation of a national asset”.

Aberdeen University said rising costs, falling numbers of international students, and a cut in Scotland Government funding had combined to create a “material uncertainty” over its ability to deliver a financial recovery plan. Or, to put it another way, the rising cost-of-living crisis has exposed the follies of Scotland’s two governments.

Aberdeen University is the fifth oldest in the UK (Picture: The Print Collector/Heritage Images via Getty Images)

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The SNP doesn’t pay anything like enough to fund its ‘free tuition’ policy, which is more about independence than education. According to a recent Institute of Fiscal Studies’ analysis, universities received £7,610 per Scottish student, about 21 per cent less than English universities, which also rely on foreign students because of a domestic funding shortfall of £2,500 per home undergraduate. Meanwhile, the Conservatives’ obsession with reducing immigration now extends to discouraging those same overseas students, while universities continue to suffer from the loss of EU funding since Brexit.

The SNP response to Aberdeen’s plight? Blame Westminster “entirely”. Nothing to do with the people actually in charge. As the NHS teeters towards collapse, prisons overflow, ferries lie unfinished, the loss of one of Scotland’s great universities would surely underscore what is happening: a historic decline of a prosperous nation under the leadership of politicians blind to real problems and how to fix them because they view everything through the distorting lenses of either the independence dream or the anti-immigrant sentiments that they hope will keep them in power.