I read with interest your front page article ("Universities feel threatened", The Herald, June 24) on the view of senior university managers that they feel threatened by the centralising instincts of the Scottish Government.
The autonomy of the higher education sector is a long established and important principle and one which UCU Scotland, the union for academic and related staff, wholly supports.
But the views of senior managers reported focused on their criticism of single outcome agreements designed to widen access to universities and what they regard as interference over governance issues. UCU Scotland will argue as vociferously as anyone for the retention of academic freedom, for staff to speak on contentious matters without fear of reprisal and for universities to retain autonomy.
But universities exist and thrive only as part of the community they are in. Given the substantial public funding they receive, they have a duty to that community and politicians are right to demand more of our universities. They are right to demand wider access and more open and representative university courts and senates. Autonomy means more than the ability to give those at the top pay rises 10 times the rate offered to staff. To defend Scotland's poor records on access and governance on the basis that any attempt to address these issues is an attack on autonomy is shoddy and does nothing to add to the debate.
Mary Senior, Scotland Official, UCU Scotland,
6 Castle Street, Edinburgh
Your report (" Universities feel threatened", The Herald, June 24) prompts me to say that for once I do in fact agree with a number of the principles enshrined in the Scottish Government's Post -16 Education (Scotland) Act 2013, though sadly I feel it does not go nearly far enough.
Your Leader Comment on the issue within the report was titled "Universities and their autonomy" which seems to sum up in a nutshell what some see as an inherited problem. I feel there is often a fine line between autonomy and a monopoly, which I rarely find a helpful concept least of all in Scottish education.
Surely the terms higher education and further education are purely a contrived human construct with no real meaning in the 21st century. I suggest the distinction remains an anachronism due to the historical development of post-school education. Study at an FE college or at university requires exercising the same mental processes including the development of problem solving skills, eLearning, perception, cognition and personal development planning to name just a few.
A National Certificate or Diploma from a Scottish FE college meets validated national standards and therefore gaining such a qualification tells an employer key facts which are not specifically associated with the particular college attended.
But our university structure has, largely due to their autonomy, produced "A" listed establishments. This means that we also have Scottish universities which are then wrongly perceived as "B" or even "C" listed. While our universities are overseen by the UK Quality Assurance Agency, perceptions persist due to their love of academic elitism. In a post-industrial society is it not time to radically renovate our educational provision after secondary school?
Bill Brown,
46 Breadie Drive,
Milngavie.
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