NEWS RELEASE
30 November 2007
Scotland must once and for all decide what universities can and should be doing for the nation’s economy and people, one of its most senior academics has said.
Professor Bernard King, speaking at the University of Abertay Dundee’s graduation ceremony today (Friday, 30 November), said:
“Will we be bold enough to decide that, in a modern post-industrial manufacturing economy such as Scotland, universities must focus on unlocking the potential of the population at large, not just the potential of a handful of top researchers?
“Let me be blunt: having internationally competitive universities for the sake of it is no guarantee of economic prosperity – what use is having the world’s best medical school if none of its graduates stays in Scotland?” he said.
Professor King welcomed the announcement last week by the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning of a ‘Joint Future Thinking Taskforce’ for universities.
“I hope that today, on St Andrews Day of all days, we can begin to think seriously about some answers to these questions. Scotland simply cannot afford not to grasp this particular thistle,” he said.
Professor King referred to most of the debate over the last two weeks on university funding as “short-term in scope and narrow in focus”.
“We must not lose sight of the much tougher questions of what we want our universities to be doing for the next 20 years, and how they might be called on to continue to support a more devolved Scotland, or a Scotland in a more enhanced constitutional state,” he said.
Professor King insisted that Scotland’s universities could be the “backbone of the knowledge economy”.
“Their outputs - the graduates and the new creative ideas they produce – are essential for economic development,” he said.
“Now, as Scotland faces a future of even greater change, we need more than ever before to develop a consensus on what our universities are actually for – cloistered laboratories for blue-sky research or drivers of economic progress – and they must be funded accordingly,” he added.
Professor King pointed out that despite the pace of technological and economic change over the past 15 years, the way in which university funding is allocated has hardly changed at all.
“The vast bulk of the non-teaching funding still goes to blue-sky research with little or no immediate economic benefit, and very little goes to the generation and exploitation of entrepreneurial thinking,” he said.
Professor King said that Scottish higher education operates in a UK context, with UK-centric funding policies, and pointed out that a “significant proportion” of overall funding comes from the UK research councils and charities, or is allocated according to the findings of the UK research assessment exercise.
He questioned how a more devolved Scotland, or one in a “more enhanced constitutional state” would secure these research funds.
“Will we have Scottish research councils as national investment resources to be distributed to Scottish universities? Will we have our own research assessment exercise?” he said
“If, as the Americans calculate, it costs 2 billion dollars a year to fund a comprehensive research university, equivalent to our entire higher education budget, on what basis will we be truly competitive with the USA, China, India, or even England?
“Earlier this week, a representative at the Royal Society of Edinburgh warned of the danger of the UK developing a two-tier higher education system because of a lack of public funding in Scotland.
“I fear he might be deluding himself and misleading his readers – the UK and Scotland have had a two-tier system for 15 years: the pre-92 universities and the post-92 universities. The real danger is that unless urgent action is taken, the UK will have a three-tier system – the first comprising English universities, while Scottish universities occupy the second and third.”
(ends)
Media enquiries: Kevin R Coe, for the University of Abertay Dundee
Tel: 01382 308223 Mobile: 07850 904110