Scotland's Universities

That the Parliament believes that, as well as their long-standing reputation for academic excellence, the recent international success of Scotland’s universities has been a result of their ability, as autonomous and diverse institutions, to react, in both an effective and flexible manner, to the increasing challenges in global education, Scotland’s economic priorities and the need to develop their research and capital assets in a way that allows them to make maximum use of opportunities in knowledge exchange and articulation with other educational institutions; is alarmed by the evidence placed on record by Universities Scotland and individual academic institutions, which suggests that sections of the Higher Education Governance (Scotland) Bill could increase significantly the risks of Office for National Statistics (ONS) reclassification; is concerned that, if ONS reclassification was to occur, the higher education sector would lose significant sums of money; believes that any such moves would seriously undermine the strength of the university system in Scotland and therefore threaten the international standing of its higher education institutions; calls on the Scottish Government to seek urgent external legal and technical advice on the matter and to publish, in full, all the analysis conducted to date on the matter, and further calls on the Scottish Government to make a formal commitment to remove all clauses from the Bill that could increase the risk of ONS reclassification.