Universities funding body under fire

A parliamentary committee examined funding

The body which distributes grants to Scotland's universities and higher education institutions has been heavily criticised by a Scottish Parliament committee.

The lifelong learning committee said that the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (Shefc) botched a review of the way courses are funded.

The committee called for the creation of an independent body to re-examine the way higher education courses are funded - because it does not trust Shefc to do the job.

MSPs are calling for an independent body

MSPs would also like to see research with a commercial application given priority.

This would see financial backing being given to development projects which result in new jobs and not just new theories.

Scotland's universities and colleges receive grants for teaching and research from Shefc.

Reacting to the criticism, Shefc said it had reached "broad agreement" with universities on the best way forward.

Committee convener Alex Neil said: "This committee believes that Shefc profoundly mishandled the teaching review.

'Transparent process'

"It underestimated the difficulty of developing an evidence base to underpin its new funding formula.

"But even worse, it completely failed to appreciate that any major change in funding allocation must be founded upon a strong evidence base.

"In order to make more money available for medical courses, it appeared other essential courses were being robbed of resources.

"The experience, hopefully, will be learnt by Shefc, they are highly experienced people, and this has been a process where they have had lessons to learn.

"But we are not damning them or saying that as a result of one mistake there should be a clearout. That would be unfair."

Earlier this year it announced plans to change the way it distributed the cash.

This essentially meant that there would be more money for subjects like medicine and less for the arts.

Alex Neil: Teaching review "mishandled"

The universities claimed that would lead to job losses and a lowering of standards.

The committee report said there was significant support for a simpler and more open system of funding but there was concern at the lack of evidence for the new proposals.

Reacting to the report Shefc said in a statement: "These reviews were always going to arouse a certain amount of controversy and rightly so.

It is fair to say we have learned lessons from the challenge

Shefc statement

"The future funding of teaching and research in our universities deserves to be hotly and thoroughly debated.

"It is fair to say we have learned lessons from the challenge of trying to establish a pragmatic, fairer and more transparent system of funding for our universities.

"We tried in good faith to establish evidence for our review, but it became clear that this simply does not exist in universities at the moment.

"A new UK-wide costing system is being introduced in the next few years which will improve evidence in the future."