{"id":494993,"date":"2026-03-25T19:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/494993\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T19:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:14:07","slug":"heriot-watt-staff-strike-in-latest-action-to-hit-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/494993\/","title":{"rendered":"Heriot-Watt staff strike in latest action to hit universities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Over half of Scotland&#8217;s higher education institutions are in dispute or have been in dispute this past year over staffing or funding cuts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Claire McPherson, director of Universities Scotland, said: &#8220;The grim reality is that universities are facing an incredibly challenging mix of rising costs, set against both falling and highly volatile sources of income, domestically and internationally.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">More than half of Scotland&#8217;s universities are forecast to be in deficit this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rising costs &#8211; particularly the impact of inflation, energy prices and national insurance increases &#8211; have all hit the sector, whilst the number of international students has dropped for the past two years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Universities have long claimed that the money they receive from the Scottish government to ensure &#8220;free tuition&#8221; for Scottish students has not kept pace with inflation and is less per student than similar institutions in England get from tuition fees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Recruiting international students who pay higher fees \u2013 of up to \u00a340,000 per year \u2013 has helped fill the financial shortfall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But changes to immigration and visa rules, currency fluctuations and increasing international competition have combined to leave this income stream vulnerable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over half of Scotland&#8217;s higher education institutions are in dispute or have been in dispute this past year&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-494993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}