By Keith Aitken in Edinburgh | 29 January 2014
The funding and international reputation of Scotland’s universities is being damaged by the UK coalition government’s ‘nasty’ and ‘xenophobic’ immigration policies, Scottish Education Secretary Michael Russell claimed today.
It follows a halving last year in the numbers coming to study in Scotland from the Indian sub-continent, a key marketplace for Scottish universities, and an overall 1% drop in numbers of foreign students, though there were modest rises in numbers from some countries like China and the US.
‘The debate south of the border is being driven by [the UK Independence Party] and by a nasty xenophobia which certainly revolts me and I think revolts many others,’ Russell told an education conference in Edinburgh.
‘Scotland needs to be seen as a welcoming place, open for academic and research business, and more than willing to see those of talent staying if they wish to build lives and careers,’ he added.
‘That cannot happen without independence.’
However, Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael told the same conference that one reason for the global reputation of British universities was its integrated research environment. ‘This integration ensures a coherent and strategic approach to research activity in a common research area. It allows funding, ideas and people to flow unhindered across the UK in pursuit of research excellence.
‘And that is of benefit to us all, a benefit that comes from being part of a United Kingdom,’ Carmichael claimed.
‘As part of the UK we are able to share the costs and risks of research, funding it from a large and diverse tax base to make research more affordable.’
But Russell argued that Scottish universities’ efforts to attract overseas students, who pay lucrative fees, were falling foul of UK immigration policies ‘entirely focused on cutting numbers and measuring success by restriction and expulsion’.
He said: ‘When genuine scholars are treated with suspicion then the reputation of the UK and, by association, Scotland as a place to study is undermined.’
Russell’s speech touches on two especially raw areas of the independence debate: university fees and immigration. On the former, the SNP government’s promise of no fees for Scottish-based students contrasts with the fees charged to students from elsewhere in the UK, a strategy that opponents claim would be unlawful if Scotland became independent within the European Union.
Immigration, meanwhile, is seen as a clear blue water issue by supporters of independence, who believe that Scottish voters harbour little of the anti-immigration impulse to which UK parties pander, and that increased immigration can be of both economic and cultural benefit to Scotland.
