University funding and jokes

So what should the Scottish Government do?

1. I would genuinely abolish all tuition fees for full-time Scottish-domiciled students doing ug degrees in Scottish universities. De facto, they currently do not exist - in the sense that SAAS pays them for most; and post-2008 do not seek to recover any part of them. But SAAS does not pay them for ft undergraduates who are doing a second ug degree or who are in the x+2 year of a degree that takes x years to get normally or those who do not fit the definiition of "Scottish domiciled". So the University of Dundee website has one page that explains that Scottish ug students pay no fees; and several other pages that explain that they do pay fees  but can usually get SAAS to pay them. Cut across this confusion, and abolish them. There is a cost, but it is small. Scotland unambiguously will have no tuition fees for Scottish students doing f-t ug degrees.

2. By EU law, the same applies to all non-UK EU students. That is a big hit on SG: but it has to take it. It has no choice. Russell and Salmond are misguided on that point.

3. SG should allow Scottish universities to raise revenue via tuition fees from English (and possibly) Irish students. Russell and Salmond are totally correct on that point.

(Wales is irrelevant in financial terms: but possibly not politically. Always good to make a political gesture that costs next to nothing.)

And that money is spread around the system, as explained in my excellent letter to the Herald today.

And, of course, as at present, all can charge fees to overseas (i.e. non-EU) students.

4. No money for university teaching to be raised by compulsion from private-sector employers: they pay enough already.  Trying to get more is a bum idea: Russell and Salmond are misguided on that point. (Ken : are you comfortable with that line?)

5. Each Scottish and non-UK EU student has a Unit of Resource (UoR) attached to him/her, as currently. SFC pays that on behalf of the SG in full to the universities for Scottish and non-UK EU students. (What they pay for English and Irish students is a bit different, as my Herald letter explained). So SAAS has no role in this: it does at the moment i.e.it pays the tuition fee element of the UoR.

6. (Choose your percentages). Of this sum of money, SG, through SFC, pays 100% upfront  to universities; but with some , say 50%, having no strings attached.

7.  (Identify  your percentage i.e. 100 less your previous precentage). Of the other,say 50%, SG expects to recover half of it over 30 years by graduate contributions  from high-earning graduates; but will (taking the advice of HEPI and IFS) expect and indeed pledge to have to write off the other half on low-earning graduates and/or aged  graduates and/or deid graduates  and/or bankrupt graduates and /or Patagonian-relocated Scottish and Spanish and Portuguese graduates.

This plan may have some defects : but it would be hard to envisage riots in George Square about such a plan (especially now that Strathclyde's most infamous current student is about to be locked up). And Camilla would be safe in her carriage on the Royal Mile.

(If larded with a few more funnies, this might even be another Smith + Smith for the THE)

Merry Xmas.