Hansard

I am glad that Elaine Murray has secured a debate on a topic that is of such vital importance to the future of the south-west of Scotland. As time is very brief, I will be able to pick out only one or two points.

As a University of Glasgow graduate, I must declare if not an interest then certainly a bias. There is no doubt in my mind—and, indeed, in the mind of many others who have had any association with the Crichton campus—that Glasgow's association with the campus has been one of the cornerstones of its success and reputation.

The University of Glasgow is one of Britain's premier universities. It is a member of the Russell group and it has a distinguished record of research. In the research assessment exercise, 23 areas received a 5 rating, with five receiving the top 5* rating. I do not think that someone could be considered an academic snob for suggesting that we cannot replace that contribution simply by increasing the contributions from other partner institutions already on the campus.

As we heard from Elaine Murray, the Scottish funding council has questioned the relevance to the Dumfries and Galloway economy of the liberal arts courses that are offered at the Crichton by the University of Glasgow. Graeme Davis, whom Elaine Murray mentioned, was principal of Glasgow when the Crichton began, and he was clear that a desirable aim was for a broad-based university education that gave graduates a wide range of skills that would help them to prepare for a fast-changing world in which people needed transferable skills. I share that view. There is clearly a role for specialist, technological and scientific disciplines, but there is also clearly a role for the broad generalist. Heaven help society if we all become technocrats and nothing more.

It is a philistine proposition, which I would not expect from the body responsible for higher education funding, to say that arts courses are not relevant to Dumfries and Galloway. If they are not relevant there, they are not relevant in Edinburgh, Glasgow or the Highlands and Islands, as Elaine Murray said. As she also said, it is not as if the courses are not of great relevance to Dumfries and Galloway because of their concentration on the environment and tourism. Those are areas in which our economy could expect to grow and prosper.

The people of Dumfries and Galloway feel as if they are being treated less favourably than people in other parts of Scotland in many ways. The Crichton has produced a briefing note setting out how similar we are to the Highlands and Islands in many areas of deprivation and social make-up but how far we differ from the Highlands and Islands in the amount of money that we receive for higher education, on which Dumfries and Galloway is short changed.

We are not talking about a lot of money. Considering that the funding council's budget is £1,647,201,000, the amount that the University of Glasgow is looking for is peanuts. It should not be beyond the wit of the Minister for Finance and Public Service Reform to sort that out.

Higher education is the responsibility of the Scottish Executive. Regardless of the administrative means that the Executive chooses to discharge that responsibility, it has the final responsibility. The south-west of Scotland expects a quality of higher education no less than that of any other part of Scotland. People have a right to hold that expectation and there is a strong justification for the feeling that, until recently, they were discriminated against.

In the final analysis, I do not think that anyone in the south-west of Scotland or in the chamber wants to lay responsibility on one body or another. I am not interested in apportioning blame to the University of Glasgow, the funding council or the guidance given to the funding council by ministers; I am interested in getting the problem sorted out. I am convinced that that requires the continuing presence of the University of Glasgow on the Crichton campus. It is the Executive's duty to make sure that that happens—nothing less than that will satisfy me or the people of the south-west of Scotland.