Scottish universities contribute to global economic and social advancements through groundbreaking scientific and medical discoveries and influential philosophical and economic ideas.
The higher education system in Scotland currently stands at a crossroads. We have seen many of our most prestigious institutions facing unprecedented budget challenges and the University of Aberdeen is among those having to consider new ways to continue to be successful.
Visa restrictions introduced by the last UK Government resulted in a significant decline in international student numbers seen across the sector. At the same time in Scotland, we have faced more than a decade of real-terms decline in the funding of our Scottish undergraduate students.
Calls for change tend to be reduced to arguments over tuition fees but the first question we need to ask is what are the outcomes we want to achieve — what do we want from higher education as a nation? What is it we want our universities to be achieving for the social, economic and collective good? — and then work from that to how we should fund them in order to be able to achieve those outcomes.
The University of Aberdeen is currently addressing a budget gap of £5.5million in the next academic year which equates to around two percent of our total revenue. This may, compared to problems elsewhere in the higher education sector, sound like a relatively small gap in our budget but nevertheless it is an issue we need to resolve by generating more revenue.
The University is working collectively to generate extra income, exploring collaboration across all Schools and disciplines to achieve revenue growth which could be via on-campus or online education, transnational education and commercialisation.
In addition, are also exploring ways to more effectively shape and enhance our educational portfolio to create a more financially and academically sustainable and efficient portfolio of degree programmes and courses that attract larger numbers of students. A limited voluntary severance and early retirement scheme will also help us to address the current budget gap.
We have a huge amount of very high-quality work here at Aberdeen, as evidenced by our consistently outstanding levels of student satisfaction, the strong growth in our research awards and our impressive UK league table rankings.
We will do everything we can at an institutional level to ensure the University remains on a firm financial footing, making efficiency savings and taking steps to reduce our budget gap but the continued financial pressures on universities cannot be ignored.
It is time for the sector and the Scottish and UK government to approach the funding of higher education as an investment in our future workforce and productivity that pays huge dividends to social justice and economic growth.
Professor George Boyne is Principal and Vice-Chancellor at University of Aberdeen.