Scotland may be separated from Shanghai by 5,000 miles but this has not prevented the nation’s universities from emerging as a favoured destination for Chinese post-graduate students.
Already some 5,000 Chinese students are studying at Scotland’s 14 universities and the numbers are expected to increase further following the launch in April of 50 Saltire scholarships by the Scottish government.
When matched with scholarships and bursaries from the universities themselves, the £2,000 grants will enable postgraduate students from the Peoples’ Republic of China to undertake one-year masters degrees in Scotland.
Launching the initiative in Beijing, Fiona Hyslop, education secretary, said: “We want to create a self-confident, outward-looking nation and as part of that we want to encourage the brightest and the best students to come and study here.”
Overseas students already account for 20 per cent of total student numbers in Scottish Universities, contributing more than £181m in fees — and the proportion is expected to grow in the medium term.
Another initiative intended to bolster overseas student numbers and cement international links came last month when Scotland’s universities signed a memorandum of understanding with the 281 members of the Association of Indian Universities to promote academic collaboration, particularly in renewable energy.
The oil-rich Gulf states are also seen as a rich stamping ground by Scotland’s universities. Strathclyde University established a satellite campus in Dubai in 1995, and now also offers MBA courses in Oman and Bahrain through local partners. Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University, seen as world-class in the field of petroleum engineering, established its own campus in Dubai International Academic City in 2005.
It helps that the nation’s universities are globally recognised for their academic and research prowess — particularly in the fields of renewable energy, biotechnology and infomatics.
In the recently published Times Higher Education Supplement three Scottish universities — Edinburgh (23rd), Glasgow (73rd) and St Andrews (83rd) — ranked in the world’s top 100, while the University of Aberdeen ranked 153rd. In a separate Sunday Times survey, St Andrews was described as “firmly established as the leading multi-faculty alternative to Oxford and Cambridge”.
Attracting overseas students is seen by policymakers as a way of enhancing Scotland’s status and speeding economic recovery. For every three overseas students that come to Scotland, it is estimated at least one long-term job is created.
On the home front, Scotland’s universities were relieved in September when, contrary to expectations, the finance secretary John Swinney said the government was sticking with plans to boost their funding by two per cent for 2010-11. Universities Scotland says its members intend to repay the favour by ensuring that they become even more closely intertwined with the nation’s economic fabric and focus even more heavily on helping Scotland pull itself out of recession.
“Our focus is attracting and developing the human capital that will restore Scotland to long-term economic health,” says Robin McAlpine, public affairs manager for Universities Scotland.
Professor Jim McDonald, principal of Strathclyde University, says that a recent deal between Scottish & Southern Energy and his Glasgow-based academic institution points a way forward. The deal, supported by a £2.8m regional selective assistance grant from the Scottish government, will see the Perth-based utility company build a £20m centre of engineering excellence for renewable energy (Ceere) in Glasgow.
There are plenty of examples of how the universities are reaching out and helping their local economies, including 2kt, an initiative from Edinburgh Napier and Queen Margaret Universities that aims to unlock the “tacit knowledge, intellectual property and facilities” inside such institutions.
One fear among the nation’s universities and higher education institutes is that they are going to be handicapped unless the Scottish government reviews its 2001 decision to bar them from charging “top-up” tuition fees to Scottish students. English universities were never banned from charging fees and may have their £3,225 caps increased from next year.
Iain McWhirter, political commentator and rector at the University of Edinburgh, regrets that the former consensus on tuition fees – that the Scottish government’s decision to abolish them for Scottish-domiciled students in 2001 was “a good thing” – is starting to break down.
When the cap on tuition fees is lifted to £5,000 per student per year in England, McWhirter says Scotland’s universities stand to lose the equivalent of £240m in revenue – and that Edinburgh University alone will face a £32m a year funding gap. And there is no certainty that the Scottish government will be in a position to make up the difference.
The fear is that, if the ban were to persist, Scotland’s universities will be increasingly handicapped financially – particularly at a time when the £1.03bn they currently receive from the public purse is by no means assured, with public expenditure cutbacks very much on the agenda – and that their degrees could become a devalued currency.
James Mitchell, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, says the Scottish parliament’s decision to ban tuition fees for Scottish students was a mistake: “It is likely that it will take many years to reverse. But that process needs to begin.”
Over and above the £1.03bn they receive each year from the Scottish government, the universities are already earning £1bn from the private sector, for example by selling training programmes to the likes of Shell and Statoil, selling research and commercialising intellectual property.
Prof McDonald believes that the universities will be so pivotal to Scotland’s future competitiveness that the government should recognise them as the “seventh sector” for driving the country’s future economic growth. Scottish Enterprise currently has six “key” sectors including creative industries, financial services, energy, life sciences and tourism but Prof McDonald, who is also a non-executive director of Scottish Enterprise, says he will be lobbying for the universities to be recognised as the seventh.
This article was published in the Financial Times’ Doing Business in Scotland Supplement on 4 November 2009.