Universities Scotland director Claire McPherson said the report shone a light on the steps that institutions were taking to improve their financial situations.<\/p>\n
“However, the missing context from the report is the systematic and significant reduction in funding the sector has received from the Scottish government over the last decade,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Universities have had to make difficult decisions in a challenging financial climate, but they have done that whilst also facing real-time funding cuts to their central financial settlement from the Scottish government.<\/p>\n
“The evidence is now clear. Without action, the financial pressures facing universities will continue to intensify.”<\/p>\n
Gavin Donoghue, chief executive of Colleges Scotland, said the report highlighted that funding for colleges was 7.5% lower in real terms now than in 2021.<\/p>\n
He said colleges had done everything possible to balance their budgets, but they could not continue to absorb current rising costs, or adapt for the future, without additional support.<\/p>\n
The Scottish government’s Tertiary Education minister Alyn Smith said he recognised the challenges highlighted in both reports.<\/p>\n
He said many of the issues were outside the government’s control and not unique to Scotland, such as visa restrictions, Brexit, inflation and National Insurance rises.<\/p>\n
Smith said ministers were working closely with universities and colleges to develop a more sustainable and resilient model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Universities Scotland director Claire McPherson said the report shone a light on the steps that institutions were taking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-788570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788570","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=788570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}