From the STV website yesterday:
‘Universities will share over £1.1 billion of funding, an increase of 1.2% from the investment made in 2017/18. The revenue budget for colleges will increase by 8.3% to nearly £600 million, with the college capital budget also increasing by nearly £30 million to a total of £76.7 million. The indicative allocations, published by the Scottish Funding Council, also show core student support funding increasing by £3.6 million, with an extra £35.2 million set aside for the implementation of the Independent Review of Student Support.’
https://stv.tv/news/scotland/1409167-almost-2-billion-funding-for-higher-education-announced/
This is in particularly good news, given the local colleges’ key role in widening access to higher education through their articulation arrangements with universities, significantly cutting the overall living and travel costs of students from disadvantaged areas. It’s worth remembering that UCAS itself acknowledges that this arrangement gives Scotland better participation rates [in HE] than elsewhere in the UK, contrary to the constant lies from our media. See this:
‘The problem is that there is rather less sub-degree HE in the non-Scottish parts of the UK than in Scotland but most of what there is appears to be recruited through UCAS; meanwhile in Scotland there’s a much larger amount of HE provided in FE colleges, pretty much all at sub-degree level, which is not recruited through UCAS at all…. Indeed, it’s the HE provided in colleges which gives Scotland the edge in overall participation rates.’
https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/jan-16-deadline-application-rates-report.pdf
See this for more:
Talking-up Scotland 
Access to university and course completion has bedevilled young people from areas with a high Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). The reasons for these problems are many and are mirrored in data from other parts of the UK.
Being multi-causal, there is no single solution, and so a range of strategies have to be deployed.
One, which the former Strathclyde Regional Council embarked on in its Renfrew Division (this encompassed the current East Renfrewshire, Renfrewshire and Inverclyde areas.) was the ‘Access Programme’, which was targeted at young people returning for a Sixth Year having attained, in Fifth Year, a clutch of Higher Grade awards which was insufficient for the then entry requirements. In conjunction with a number of HE institutions of which the, then, University of Paisley was the lead body, Strathclyde Region’s Department of Education established the Access Programme, based in the now, closed and demolished Merksworth HS in Paisley. A group of students drawn from secondary schools the Renfrew Division, including those in the highly attaining Eastwood District, were bussed into Paisley for two afternoons each week to follow a programme, the successful completion of which, guaranteed entry to courses at the participating HE organisations.
The completion rate was pretty high. The students were also tracked as they went through HE and again, completion rates were higher than would have been expected had there been no Access programme.
So, the programme was a success, although the ‘perfectionist fallacists’ carped, as they always do.
The programme was ended because of the disaggregation of Strathclyde Region and the individual successor authorities, for several reasons were unable to continue, except for those who had already begun the course at the time of disaggregation.
Strathclyde Regional Council was disaggregated for nakedly political reasons, by Mr Major’s government. It was a strategic authority, which covered half of Scotland’s population and was able to transfer resources within its area to benefit areas of multiple deprivation, which were multiply deprived because the affluent had drawn local authority boundaries in such a way that the high earners working in the areas of high SIMD, all lived in leafy, and low local taxed areas outside the boundary. The prime example is the City of Glasgow and the parasitic areas like Bearsden, Milngavie, Lenzie, Newton Mearns, Clarkston, etc. Strathclyde was disaggregated so that there would be small, probably Tory voting enclaves (there were not, as it turned out!) and to get rid of a strongly Labour voting authority which had a huge democratic authority by accommodating half of Scotland. Lothian Regional Council was disaggregated for similar reasons.
By taxing progressively and distributing resources equitably, the lives of ALL of the population are improved. However, the Tories (and New Labour), as always prefer rigged markets.
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Very intersting. Fallacists sound like Spanish fascists.
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