COLLEGE lecturers are facing a wave of redundancies as a result of Scottish Government funding cuts, MSPs have been warned.

The college sector in Scotland has already lost thousands of jobs over the past few years, with public sector employment figures published earlier this month showing an annual drop of 1300 – some 8% of the sector.

Most of the job losses have been through voluntary redundancies and the Scottish Government has urged colleges to maintain that approach. However, Holyrood's education committee was told it would be difficult to avoid compulsory job losses in future.

The committee was also told the continuing cuts to college teaching would damage the country's prospects of economic recovery.

The warnings came as it took evidence from a range of academics, economists and trade unions as part of its scrutiny of the SNP's draft budget.

Last week, Finance Minister John Swinney said an extra £17 mil-lion would be spent on students, but college principals said funding for teaching would still fall by at least £6m. The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) and student body NUS Scotland believe the cuts are more than £30m.

Paul Buchanan, former chair of the board of management at Reid Kerr College in Paisley, told MSPs: "I found it difficult as a chair of the board to reconcile a desire for no compulsory redundancies with the need to manage a teaching resource... it is going to become increasingly difficult to meet that aspiration."

Emma Phillips, regional organiser for public services union Unison, said morale among college staff was extremely low. She added: "There is potential for thousands more jobs to be lost in the coming years as the funding cuts begin to take effect."

David Belsey of the EIS said: "There have been compulsory redundancies, including lecturers, and the reason for that is driven by spending cuts."

The NUS Scotland said it was worried by the impact of cuts on the quality of education, with the prospect of larger class sizes and cuts in hours.

Meanwhile, Professor Jeremy Peat, director of the Edinburgh-based David Hume Institute, which has a focus on public policy and the economy, said colleges should be made a funding priority to help the country recover from the recession.

As reported in The Herald on Monday, Jim Gallacher, Emeritus Professor at Glasgow Caledonian University, warned the Government's strategy of widespread college mergers was no "quick fix". Mr Gallacher agreed with the need for reorganisation, but added: "Mergers can be complex, difficult and time-consuming processes, and the savings they result in may take some time to be realised."