Hansard

I congratulate Jim Eadie on the motion and I declare an interest as I, too, am a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. To extend a metaphor that was used earlier, cabinet secretaries for education cannot be entirely monogamous in their affections for universities, but I have the strongest affection for the University of Edinburgh and its achievements, on which I congratulate it.

I entered freshers week at the university 43 years ago this week. Last night, when I was walking along Holyrood Road, I saw a number of freshers wandering around and I wondered what their experience of this great university is, particularly as it has grown and changed so much. I was struck by the point that was made about investment in the university, which has come from the university’s resources and from other assistance over a period.

Last night, I was in the remarkable Inspace building, which is used to encourage and develop new technologies. As various members have said, the university has a remarkable track record of taking ideas and ensuring that they work and that they work in the marketplace. That knowledge exchange work, which Kezia Dugdale mentioned, is important.

The Scottish Government made a commitment to ensure that a single knowledge exchange office is developed in Scotland and I will shortly say more about that, but we also want to protect the good work that is already done. We should not put in a single monolith, and Edinburgh is an exceptional university for knowledge exchange. Just two weeks ago, I met some of the people who are involved in that.

Before going into the substance of my speech, I will respond to a couple of points that have been made. I am happy to take Aileen McLeod’s point and to talk to David Willetts about the KIC project. I think that we have already been in touch about how to take that forward, and I always try to work with others to project the future and the work of Scottish universities on the international stage.

Kezia Dugdale made important points about how things should work in universities and about ranking systems. There is a range of ranking systems in the world. Next week, the Times Higher Education rankings will be announced. The QS rankings use a scoring system that allocates 40 per cent to academic reputation, 20 per cent to the faculty to student ratio, 20 per cent to citations per faculty, 10 per cent to employer reputation, 5 per cent to the international faculty ratio and 5 per cent to the international student ratio. There is a range of other systems, which weight other factors.

I am certainly intrigued by the good idea that widening access should count as an important feature of a university, as it relates to how a university develops and extends itself. Of course, Edinburgh has a good story to tell on that. This year, it has 50 more widening access places than it previously had, which it is filling. In 2012-13, it awarded 158 access bursaries to Scotland-domiciled new entrants. If widening access was a feature of rankings—it would be interesting to try to persuade a rankings system to take that on—Edinburgh would continue to compete.

We should look at the continuation of competition. The outcome agreement process that the Scottish Government has established with universities considers how each university should perform. The University of Edinburgh’s 2013-14 agreement says:

“Analysis of the rankings”—

that is, looking at the progress that the university has made—

“indicates that this level of investment”—

the global excellence investment, which is a new form of investment that is designed to encourage research and internationalisation—

“in addition to other strategies already in train, should move Edinburgh into the top 15 in the QS world rankings.”

Gavin Brown pointed out the progress that is being made. We should remain ambitious, to ensure that all our universities continue to progress in that way. All the world ranking systems are not the only judge of a university; there are other ways to judge them, such as on the quality that students find in a university and the contribution that it makes to the setting in which it lives—for Edinburgh, that is the city and the wider country.

The access issues are intriguing, but we must ensure that competition continues, because that draws students to us. The activity is international and global. It is also very valuable to Scotland as a country. Higher education is the third-largest sector in our economy, which is an extraordinary thought. I know that Gavin Brown always questions figures that are given in the chamber and particularly those from the Government front bench, but my source is a Universities Scotland report. Higher education is also an enormous exporting activity. Universities are estimated to leverage £1.3 billion into the Scottish economy from sources outside Scotland.

I congratulate Edinburgh on what it has done. It has a wonderful and rich history. As Jim Eadie pointed out, it is the place of Hutton. When we look up through the window that is to my left, we can see Hutton’s stone on Salisbury Crags. It is the foundation of world geology and the place that proved that two geological theories went together.

Of course, Edinburgh is the place where many other things have happened. Dolly the sheep and the Higgs boson have been mentioned. Nobody has mentioned that Edinburgh is the last university in these islands that had a student executed for heresy, but we should probably gloss over that.

In history, in English literature, as Malcolm Chisholm pointed out, in medicine, in veterinary medicine and in a variety of other fields, including in the area that I studied—Scottish studies, Scottish literature and Scottish history—Edinburgh has been groundbreaking and has had tremendous success in teaching and in research. Jim Eadie made that point forcibly and it should be made again: all our universities in Scotland are universities both for teaching and for research. Keeping those two things together, making sure that one feeds the other and, in particular, encouraging the growth of postgraduate research and teaching in our universities is the way forward.

This Government has increased investments for university research and knowledge exchange activities. This year we put in place the global excellence initiative with Edinburgh and—I say to Mr Malik—with Glasgow. Edinburgh and Glasgow are matching with their own fundraising in order to drive themselves forward in the international rankings. The University of Glasgow rose three places in the QS to 51, the University of St Andrews rose 10 places to 83 and the University of Aberdeen climbed 14 places to 148, so, including Edinburgh, those four universities are in the top 200 in the world. That is a unique achievement because Scotland has, per head of population, the largest number of universities in the top league in the world. That is remarkable for a nation of 5 million people.

Edinburgh has been called the capital of the mind and it is a place—and we have a country—that values learning. Learning, to some extent, is in our DNA. That is proved by the excellence of our universities. It is also proved by the way in which the universities are attracting investment from places outside Scotland. I opened the Fraunhofer centre for applied photonics at the University of Strathclyde—the first Fraunhofer centre in these islands. That is one example out of many of the type of investment that is taking place and will continue to take place in Scotland.

Universities are growing; universities are exporting; universities are increasingly attractive. The universities are driving our economy. Edinburgh is at the forefront of that. It is a wonderful university to attend, as so many young people—and older people—will discover this week as they enrol for the first time. We should, in the chamber, celebrate the success of Scottish institutions. They are founded upon the principle of education being based on the ability to learn, not on the ability to pay, and long may that flourish in our country.