Scottish ministers are under pressure from university and student leaders to guarantee that students from other EU countries will get free places at Scottish universities next year.
Nicola Sturgeon’s government has been accused by universities of dragging its feet over the status of up to 13,500 EU students who could apply for Scottish courses in 2017, by failing to confirm they would still get free tuition.
The first minister has won plaudits for taking a welcoming stance to EU citizens after June’s surprise referendum vote to leave, including protecting places for those EU students who started at Scottish universities this autumn.
But the UK government has moved faster to confirm that grants and loans for EU students taking places at English universities from autumn 2017 would be protected beyond the point the UK leaves the EU, now expected in summer 2019.
Jo Johnson, the UK universities minister, said on Tuesday the current grant structure would continue, and said the measure would also reassure universities about their future funding.
The issue for Scottish ministers is complicated by the fact that unlike in the rest of the UK, EU students do not have to pay fees. Because of a loophole in EU laws, they are entitled to claim the same free tuition which is given to Scottish residents.
With 13,450 EU students at Scottish universities last year, the policy is estimated to cost Scottish taxpayers more than £75m in tuition fee subsidies. Scotland’s free tuition policy also heavily caps the freedom of Scottish universities to increase income from fees.
Some Scottish universities may already be affected by the delay in a tuition fees announcement, said Universities Scotland, the sector’s umbrella group, with applications to some highly sought after courses closing this month.
The deadline for 2017 applications to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the music and drama school in Glasgow ranked sixth in the world, ends this month, while applications for medicine, veterinary medicine and dentistry degree courses close on 15 October.
With backing from the National Union of Students Scotland and the university and college lecturers’ union UCU, Alastair Sim, the director of Universities Scotland, said the sector needed the same certainties that Johnson had given English universities. University finances were already so stretched, and the delay was adding to their anxieties, he said.
“Scotland’s universities and EU applicants applying here really need certainty from the Scottish government on the fee status for courses starting in 2017. Universities are already receiving thousands of applications and they need to start making offers now,” he said. “It is very difficult to ask EU applicants to make decisions about the next four years of their life without knowing if they are entitled to fee-free higher education or not.
“Universities, already facing funding pressures, are in the extremely difficult situation of deciding whether to make offers to students without knowing if or where the funding for their education will come from.”
A spokeswoman for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, which currently has 97 EU students among its 1,000 undergraduates, said it was important that new applicants from the EU knew what their fee status would be.
“As Scotland’s national conservatoire we’re outward-looking and passionately international in our community and ethos, and we are keen to ensure EU students continue to feel welcome to study at RCS and in Scotland,” she said.
A Scottish government spokesman said: “We are currently considering the position of students applying for the 2017-18 academic year.
“We want all EU staff and students in Scotland to feel settled and secure, and we continue to urge the UK government to urgently provide assurances that the immigration status and rights of EU nationals living in Scotland will not change in the future.”
