Highlands and islands colleges 'starved of cash' as job cuts loom
A union has issued a stark warning about funding for colleges in the Highlands and Islands
Colleges in the Highlands and Islands are being “unfairly starved of cash” to the detriment of jobs and courses, a union has claimed.
GMB Scotland warned the prospect of almost 40 redundancies at Inverness College has exposed how University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) funding must be urgently overhauled.
Currently UHI takes a 35 per cent slice of student income - around £13 million a year - to pay for central services.
It acts as an umbrella body overseeing seven colleges in the region.
However, the union says this amount is too high and more must be redirected to reach campuses.
Keir Greenaway, GMB Scotland senior organiser in public sector, said: “The situation in Inverness is only the most recent and graphic illustration of a broken funding system that is unfit for purpose and demands to be overhauled urgently.”
UHI Inverness recently launched a redundancy scheme aiming to shed 38 jobs and save £2m a year while executives estimate the UHI “top slice” costs the college £4m a year.
“Every centralised function of UHI must be transparent and justified and the default position must be that money is directed to the campuses where students are being taught,” Mr Greenaway added.
“Across the Highlands and Islands financial pressures are even more damaging because of an unfair funding system that feeds the centre and starves the campuses.
“The system is not working for colleges, staff or, most importantly, students.
“It needs to change.”
UHI oversees colleges - including Inverness, Greater Argyll, Moray, Perth, Shetland, Orkney and the North, West and Hebrides – from headquarters in Inverness with more than 250 staff.
A UHI spokeswoman said the partnership gives more than 31,000 students access to opportunities that no individual institution could provide alone.
She added: “Through our academic partnership model and Transformation programme, we are responding collectively: sharing expertise and resources, improving efficiency and focusing investment where it will have the greatest impact on academic provision and student services.
“By working together as one university partnership, we can protect and enhance access to high-quality tertiary education and research across our regions and build a stronger, more effective and financially sustainable UHI for the future.”
The call from GMB Scotland comes as staff at Dundee University walk out on strike and industrial action is planned at Edinburgh University.
Scotland’s First Minister urged Dundee University and the University and Colleges Union (UCU) to find a resolution to the planned five-week strike.
Members of the UCU voted to strike as a result of the university’s massive drive to cut costs, which has seen almost one third of its workforce leave already.
Mr Swinney said: “The government has expressed and offered and given support to the university to help it through its difficult times and, if the university and its unions can come together, it can help the university to thrive, which is what all of us want to see.”
While Michael Marra, the newly-elected leader of Scottish Labour who worked at the university for more than a decade, said: “I worked in that university for 14 years, and the extraordinary number of jobs that we lost is one of the – probably the biggest – industrial impacts that this this city has had in more than a generation.
“It’s been a grotesque betrayal of the workers, but also of the city.”
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland on Monday, the university’s principal, Professor Nigel Seaton, said he believed most classes would go ahead over the five-week period.
He said: “I’m pretty confident that most classes will go ahead and we’ll just have to see what the impact is.”
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