Chamber and committees

Absolutely.

The table that the Scottish Parliament information centre produced for the committee is clear that pretty much everyone is doing their bit. The commissioner’s ask for individual targets is a good one, because some universities have easily got to where they have got to and can go beyond but, for others, there are additional challenges.

I should have said earlier that we are waiting for a formal response from Universities Scotland, but we understand that the university sector is agreeable to the approach that the commissioner has suggested, and we will be looking to take that forward as quickly as we can.

There had been extensive discussions with the University of Dundee in particular about its challenges, and directly with the SFC on a regular basis. I met the new—that is, the current—leadership of the university directly several weeks ago. It was appropriate to do so, as they had reached the point where they were beginning to articulate some of the challenges to the staff. Discussions with the University of Dundee were taking place. However, as I have said, the £15 million figure was predicated on a financial transactions underspend—those were the available moneys.

I did not say that, Mr Rennie. I take you back to what I said earlier about the relationship between the SFC—

In the first instance, we need to know whether we can introduce this. That is the starting point, and that is what we are working through currently. As I have said to you on a number of occasions, the reason for its not being introduced is not, as some of your witnesses articulated last week, to do with resource and cost. That is not at the forefront of our thinking; our thinking is on how we can get to the point at which it might be possible to introduce the measure, because we absolutely get the merits of it.

Mr Mason’s point is well made and I understand it. As a constituency MSP, I understand his frustrations.

The SFC has been doing a piece of work on the sustainability of institutions in order to get that broader picture and to ascertain whether any other institutions are in a similar position to the University of Dundee. I think the SFC has a sense that there are no others, but that is not to say that our institutions are not facing challenges, because it is a UK-wide problem. The most recent figure that I saw was that 70 universities across the UK are implementing cuts of between 10 and 15 per cent in response to those challenges. That piece of work is there.

As I said to the committee before, if there are any lessons to be learned from what has happened at Dundee—a report is being written about how that came about—then there will be an opportunity within the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill to look at governance. Part of that governance may involve enhancing the SFC’s powers in order to improve its oversight, because, essentially, the SFC’s information is only as good as what is reported to it. If there is anything—and I stress the “if”—we are certainly open to looking at how we can better equip the SFC, if that is necessary, to have a clearer picture of what is happening within institutions.

Absolutely. SIMD has delivered well, up to a point, but we have to recognise that there are young people in non-SIMD20 areas who would qualify under the widening access umbrella. I think that you heard evidence last week citing the fact that Orkney, Shetland and, I think, the Western Isles, have no SIMD20 areas. It is beyond the realms of credibility to think that there are absolutely no young people living in those areas—particularly on remote islands—who might qualify. Indeed, our colleague Liam McArthur brought that to my attention a few months ago, and we discussed it at the most recent forum. The universities are now considering their approach to island communities.

I absolutely get your point about SIMD20, Mr Mason, and no one is talking about doing away with it; the question is what more we can do there. Some of the universities have contextual nuances in their policies, which allow some of them to go a little bit further—or they choose to go a bit further. We are looking to share that best practice—if you want to call it that—across the sector, pushing the envelope a bit to see what more can be done.

If the principal of Glasgow Caley were sitting here today, he would openly admit that the university has an advantage for some simple things here—although I hate to use the word “advantage”. It is surrounded by SIMD20 areas, but it has a bus station on its doorstep. The ability of young people to travel in and out of Glasgow to go to that university is far greater than is the case in remote and rural settings.

Considering how the WARF is delivered, such universities are specifically funded for the work that they do. The funding is targeted to support them. As you can see from the numbers, GCU contributes a third of the total, I think, and there are moneys that follow that.

Yes, it was transferred across.