By Keith Aitken in Edinburgh | 16 August 2013
Universities in Scotland are poised to benefit financially in the coming year from a record influx of students from the rest of the UK, paying fees of up to £9,000 a year and from non-European countries, who can pay unlimited amounts, figures have revealed.
The number of students coming to Scotland from the rest of the UK in the new academic year is up by 9.3% on last year, and there is a similar increase in the numbers coming from outside the European Union, according to figures from the Universities & Colleges Admission Service, Ucas.
Scottish students do not pay tuition fees. Under EU law, the Scottish government must extend the same privileges to citizens of other EU countries as to its own students, including paying their fees, though it is allowed to charge students from the rest of the UK. Numbers from non-British countries inside the EU are down by 2%. Critics had initially claimed that charging fees to students in the rest of the UK would damage the traditional popularity of Scotland’s 19 universities, particularly since a Scottish degree course is typically a year longer than an English one. However, these figures indicate this has not yet happened.
There were also concerns this year that Scottish students were being disadvantaged in the ‘clearing’ system, which offers surplus university places to students who have not won acceptances at first time of asking. Some feared universities were deliberately skewing clearing offers to students from the rest of the UK so as to maximise their fee income.
But that fear is also countered by the Ucas figures, which show an overall rise of 2% on last year in the numbers of Scottish students winning places at Scotland’s universities for the upcoming academic year. Around 12% more than last year – 2,780 students – found their places during the clearing stage.
Alastair Sim, director of the higher education body Universities Scotland, welcomed the figures: ‘It’s encouraging to see a modest increase in the number of students from the rest of the UK coming to Scotland, and it’s a ringing endorsement for Scottish higher education,’ he said.
‘With some of the highest levels of student satisfaction and the UK’s best rates of graduate destinations, we know we have a lot to offer students, and it is clear that this is recognised across the UK.’
The Scottish Conservatives’ education spokeswoman, Liz Smith, argued that it was wrong to decide applications on any basis other than pure academic merit: ‘The unfair system of who pays fees and who doesn’t has led to further discrimination with the capping of Scottish students, and there is deep-rooted concern within the universities about future funding,’ she said.
But the Scottish Government’s youth employment minister, Angela Constance, disagreed: ‘Scottish students get a good deal, with access based on the ability to learn not the ability to pay, and the best package of student support in the UK,’ she said. ‘These figures are good news for our young people, our universities and our economy.’
