Scottish students have saved £1 billion in tuition fees under the SNP government while students south of the Border have footed a bill of £14bn, according to Scottish Parliament research.
Research from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Spice), commissioned by the SNP, found that since fees rose to £9000 three years ago they have cost students in the rest of the UK £14bn.
The research also found that Scottish students studying at Scottish universities saved £1bn over the same number of years.
Since the introduction of tuition fees south of the Border in 1998, they have risen by as much as 800%.
The SNP Government said it is committed to keeping higher education fee-free for young people.
SNP MSP Stewart Maxwell, convener of the Scottish Parliament's education committee, said: "It was a Labour government at Westminster that opened the floodgates on fees in 1998 … We must never let that happen in Scotland."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article