Funding for higher education in Scotland to drop in real terms

The Scottish government’s draft budget for 2019-20 shows a marginal increase in funding for universities that translates to a drop in real terms, but with increases in spending on health and business R&D.

The higher education portion of the budget for the Scottish Funding Council will increase only marginally to £1.03 billion. This covers grants for teaching and research. Capital spending on higher education is set to decrease to £37.5 million in 2019-20, down from £41.3m in 2018-19.

Andrea Nolan (above), convener of Universities Scotland, said: “It is very difficult to learn that funding for universities is going to drop in real terms by 1.79 per cent.