The new leadership of the Scottish government has been urged to follow its warm words about higher education with firm commitments after a “disappointing” funding settlement for universities.
Indicative budget allocations for teaching, research and innovation announced by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) on 14 April represented a “flat cash settlement”, Universities Scotland said, with seven of the country’s 19 institutions facing a cash cut.
Alastair Sim, the director of Universities Scotland, told Times Higher Education that Scottish universities have had to weather “successive years of real-terms cuts in public funding”.
“This year by year salami-slicing by Scottish government, combined with rampant inflation, risks a managed decline of Scotland’s world-class university sector,” he added.
