The Scottish National Party only has one higher education policy, really.

The 2024 SNP manifesto sees it up front as a key pledge:

Defend free university tuition in Scotland. The SNP is the only party that will protect students and defend free education, meaning graduates in Scotland are thousands of pounds better off.

You may well wonder why a promise to do with a devolved matter would be so prominent in a manifesto that is supposed to deal with a Westminster election. It’s a fair question, and not really one we get an answer to.

Like Plaid Cymru last week, the SNP do not have a realistic chance of forming a UK government. Instead, the bits of the manifesto that do talk about non-devolved matters are couched in terms of “calling on the UK government” – and are very often requests either to increase funding to or devolve powers to the Scottish government.

In this bucket we see a prominent request to devolve the migration system, allowing the devolved government to value those who decide to work, live, study, and invest in Scotland.

Elsewhere, the SNP desire to rejoin the EU would include re-entry to the Erasmus+ scheme. As an interim measure, it wants to see the UK government commit to an EU-wide youth mobility scheme.

Significantly, there is no mention of research sparing a brief mention of artificial intelligence. Uniquely, the word “skills” does not appear at any point in the document.