Scottish college system is failing

Edinburgh College delivers some of the best courses possible for young people seeking skills on which to build a career which will last a lifetime. And some not so young.

While the impact of AI on many office-based occupations is hard to minimise ─ the revolution in the law and finance hasn’t even got going ─ but from surgeons to electricians and plumbers, super-fast computing will never fully replace highly skilled people.

When the cooling system in a data centre springs a leak, another computer isn’t going to fix it.

But the SNP has ravaged the Scottish college system, largely because of its obsession with free university tuition fees, and this month’s Audit Scotland report laid bare the damage.

A 20 per cent real terms funding cut in the last five years. A workforce shrunk by seven per cent in 2023-24 to meet savings targets. Seven colleges reported a deficit and two needed an emergency bail-out. Student numbers are down. Colleges can’t meet student or employer demand for some courses and apprenticeship programmes.

Maybe the embarrassment was why no Lothian SNP MSPs attended an Edinburgh College briefing last week, where they would have learnt that only once in the past decade, and only briefly, has its government grant been more than just staff costs. The gap is now £4.5 million and Edinburgh is the worst funded out of 12 major colleges and regions.

In fact, no other MSPs attended, so no wonder an institution vital for our economic future feels like a Cinderella service.