This 2010 extract is still mainly relevant, I feel, and it may help some YES campaigners with the ‘fairness’ questions sometimes thrown at them.
1. It is Scotland’s responsibility to offer free education to Scottish students and students permanently living in Scotland.
2. It is not in Scotland’s economic interest to offer free education to students from Europe or the rest of the UK, however, present EU legislation compels us to offer free higher education to EU students – the Umbria/Cumbria rule. It does not, however compel us to offer free education to students from the rest of the UK, since the UK is regarded as the state by the EU.
3. It is in Scotland’s interest to attract paying students from the rest of the world, and ideally we would also like EU students to pay.
4. The demands from the UK that Scotland should offer free education to Students from England in the interests of ‘fairness’ is nonsense – it would negate the whole purpose of devolved government’s freedom to decide how its money should be spent in areas of expenditure over which it has discretion. If English students didn’t pay, some other area of Scotland’s expenditure would suffer, and in the light of the draconian fees (up to £9000 per annum) that the ConLib UK government is imposing, there would be a flood of English students to Scottish universities at the expenses of places for Scottish students.
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