The first report from the Future Framework for the Sustainability and Success of Scotland’s Universities establishes the scale of the challenge facing the sector.
Financial pressures vary between institutions, but its central conclusion is that the underlying problem is systemic. That makes purely institutional responses unlikely to be sufficient.
That is the context in which Edinburgh Napier University, Queen Margaret University and Scotland’s Rural College have set out a vision for their strategic alliance. The hypothesis underpinning the Scottish Tertiary Alliance Framework is simple: Scotland should not have to choose between institutional independence and system sustainability.
The reason that vision is so immediate, and so compelling, is that the crisis goes wider than funding. Scotland faces a demographic shift that will reshape how providers recruit and plan. National Records of Scotland projections indicate that the population aged 16 to 29 will fall by 157,500 over the 25 years to mid-2049. Scotland’s 18-year-old population is projected to peak earlier than elsewhere in the UK before declining through the 2030s.
At the same time, the international student market that has helped institutions cross-subsidise teaching, research and civic activity has become less predictable. Universities Scotland’s analysis of HESA data found a 25.7 per cent reduction in non-EU postgraduate taught entrants to Scottish institutions in a single year – around 9,380 students and roughly £150m in annual income.
There is also growing concern about post-pandemic patterns of school attendance. Increasing numbers of young people are reaching higher education having missed a significant period of learning, affecting literacy, numeracy, confidence and progression. A smaller future cohort may therefore also be more unevenly prepared.
And so a sector that wants to remain both successful and accessible will need stronger routes into learning, better college articulation, credible bridging and foundation provision, flexible study, employer-linked education, and opportunities for people to enter and re-enter learning throughout their lives.
In other words, it will need to behave more like a tertiary system.
Building system capability
The alliance is exploring how three institutions can act with greater coherence where this improves outcomes for learners, staff, employers and communities, while retaining their distinct identities and missions. The challenge is to identify where scale adds value and where differentiation matters.
That includes treating specialist provision as national capability rather than a collection of separate institutional portfolios exposed to the next recruitment cycle. Healthcare education, rural and land-based education, veterinary and food systems expertise, public-service education and the natural economy are not simply market offerings. They form part of Scotland’s social and economic infrastructure.
It also means creating learner pathways that are more reliable in practice. Students should be able to move from college into higher education, carry recognised credit, access learning across institutional boundaries, and combine modes or locations of study without repeatedly encountering organisational barriers. This is already easier in Scotland than in England; we aim to make it easier still.
The alliance is examining where shared professional and technical capability could strengthen each provider’s access to expertise that would be difficult to sustain alone, including data and digital infrastructure, procurement, estates, information governance and analytics.
Importantly, the work is intended to create value beyond the three partners.
There is a public case for this
The Future Framework was established to consider the sustainability and success of Scottish universities to 2045. Its first report is deliberately diagnostic: it quantifies the challenge, but does not prescribe a solution. The next stages will examine future trends, sector-led transformation and evidence-led options for a future framework.
That creates an obligation for the sector. If providers ask government, employers, students and the public to engage in discussion about sustainable funding, they must also demonstrate a willingness to adapt how they operate. The objective is not simply cost reduction, but a better alignment of scarce capacity with national need.
The value of collaboration lies primarily in capability, resilience and collective problem-solving. Procurement savings alone are unlikely to transform institutional finances.
More importantly, collaboration can help protect provision that is important but difficult for a single institution to sustain. It can widen opportunities for learners whose educational journeys do not follow a conventional path, extend access to specialist expertise and provide employers and communities with a more coherent route into tertiary education.
The alliance has committed to publishing what it learns. The ambition is that the model proves scalable or repeatable, making it easier for other institutions and colleges to pursue their own forms of deep collaboration. Public funding should generate public infrastructure.
Autonomy in practice
Each partner will retain its own governing body, legal responsibilities, degree-awarding powers, identity and mission. Autonomy is often presented as a barrier to collaboration. It may instead be one of its foundations. Institutions are more likely to commit to shared endeavour when they are confident that their purpose, relationships and responsibilities are not being quietly traded away.
The real question is whether autonomy can be exercised in support of collective goals. Can institutions distinguish between capabilities that genuinely require local ownership and those that can be developed jointly? Can decisions be taken early enough to protect important provision before it becomes unsustainable? Can learner journeys be designed around students rather than organisational structures? These are questions of leadership, governance and trust.
For that reason, the alliance should not be judged by announcements or organisational charts. It should be judged by evidence. Have new learner routes been created? Has specialist provision been protected? Do shared services operate effectively? Do staff feel involved in shaping the work? Has the partnership been willing to abandon ideas when the evidence does not support them?
That is what a credible proof of concept looks like.
A third route
The pressures facing Scottish universities are real. The Future Framework has provided a shared evidence base and made it harder to argue that the current model is sustainable without change.
There will be difficult institutional decisions ahead across the sector, and these must remain subject to each institution’s own governance and engagement processes. There will be areas where public investment remains essential because transformation alone cannot address structural underfunding.
But Scotland should not be forced to choose only between institutional isolation and institutional disappearance.
The strategic alliance between Edinburgh Napier, Queen Margaret and SRUC is testing a third route: autonomous institutions building shared capacity, stronger learner pathways and collective resilience, while preserving the distinct strengths each brings.
The funding challenge is systemic. Demographic change is systemic. The need for flexible, place-based and lifelong tertiary education is systemic.
The response needs to be systemic too.
