| Comment | Unfortunately, central funding from the Scottish Funding Council has dropped by something like 20% over the past few years (as a result of the government prioritising funding issues in primary and secondary education) so as a matter of necessity Scottish universities have had to prioritise income from international students in order to avoid cuts in teaching staff etc.
However, there are regulations in place around the ratio of home to international students - the universities can't recruit internationals instead of home students, they have to be in addition.
As a result, this has increased the overall student numbers and, while there is also the income to provide further teaching and study space, there is of course a significant time lag in terms of the time taken to actually commission new space (for example, the plans for the old western infirmary site will take many years to realise).
This is not a UoG-specific issue, pretty much all Scottish universities are struggling with this. Hopefully people agree that increasing overall numbers is preferable to cutting staff and student resources, or worse, the government finally having to introduce tuition fees. |
|---|