IAIN Macwhirter is wrong to suggest that Universities Scotland has been behind a “disingenuous” campaign to “save our rectors” (“Yes, elected rectors for all of our universities”, The Herald, February 9). We value the role of rectors and the contribution they make to higher education governance. We know that it is not the Scottish Government’s intention to abolish rectors. So rectors have not needed us, or anyone else, to save them.
What has been a source of confusion throughout this bill is the important difference between rectors and chairs. Mr Macwhirter also seems to confuse this in his piece. Our position is that they are very different roles and should remain so. The Scottish Government was clear on this by the end of Stage 1 of the bill, but its amendments at Stage 2 put this in doubt. These appeared to confuse the roles and responsibilities of the position of chair and the position of rector, compromising the rector’s role as a tribune for students and introducing potential confusion into university governance arrangements. It was helpful that debate and further amendment at Stage 2 clarified the distinct roles of the rector and the chair or “senior lay member”.
While Universities Scotland retains significant concerns about aspects of the Bill, we do not see it in its current form as a direct threat to the role of the rector.
Alastair Sim,
Director, Universities Scotland, Holyrood Park House, 106 Holyrood Road, Edinburgh.
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 here