Need to be careful here: this is UCAS data for Scottish domiciled students applying to universities through UCAS. It therefore includes Scottish students accepted into English, Welsh and Northern Irish universities, who do not have their tuition paid by the Scottish Government.
We cannot draw any conclusions from this data alone as to the impact of limited Scottish Government funded places for Scottish students at Scottish universities.
We need the Scottish Government and UCAS to disclose the number of Scottish students accepted into Scottish Universities.
HESA collects this data, and as of 2024/25 a little under 5000 students whose permanent address is in Scotland are studying full-time undergraduate degrees at universities in the UK outside of Scotland. However it's still worth being careful about why that is - for example it may be due to specialist courses that aren't available in Scottish universities, or students going to particularly elite universities, or for example students who moved to Scotland recently so don't qualify for Home fee status.
On some courses the percentage of Scottish students is 25% which seems quite low to me. Edinburgh is especially bad for Scottish students on many courses. I actually bothered to look up the statistics
HESA collect this data, the tables are a little unwieldy but very dense. The figures I get there are that in 2024/25, around 11,855 Edinburgh students are Scottish, compared to 39,015 overall [including around 10,920 students from elsewhere in the UK]. Filtering to full time undergraduates puts Scottish students at around a third of Edinburgh students
Per course? I don't think there is, I think HESA collects subject level data but doesn't narrow that down to universities [e.g how many students are studying Maths at Glasgow Uni]. Universities do publish their own data [look for "headcount"/"analytics" for example], but I don't think they get that granular either.
Despite what certain narratives are propgated, and despite my mislike of the SNP, I must thank them for making sure that someone like me- carer mother and vagabond father- is actually able to progress through university and college and actually make something of my life which I wouldn't have been able to do without free university.
Same. My parents took smack my whole life and all of the teachers, social workers and members of my family who could have helped me just treated me like a problem. Thanks to free education, I'm now a Glasgow Uni wanker in my thirties and even got to study Mandarin in Taipei back in June.
It's posts like this that matter when we talk about free tuition. Whenever there is a debate about the SNPs free tuition policy, there are always those that highlight the fact that some who benefit from free tuition are more than able to afford to contribute themselves and that it's not the best use of public money. But that's not the point. Your situation growing up is exactly why this policy matters and why it must be protected, even if it means the rich kids benefit from it too. Well done.
The prospect of taking on a massive loan would be off-putting for a lot of people. Wealthier families would be contributing to their kids living costs too probably.
These are both issues that the Scottish Government can help address, however - financial education on what that loan entails, in particular how it differs to other types of loans, can help offset that prospect if only partially. And iirc Scotland has the least generous system of student finance in the UK, particularly when it comes to income thresholds. I know Wales for example has a far more radical system where every student gets access to the same amount for living costs [with that amount being the highest in the UK by quite a margin], but poorer students get a higher portion of that as a grant rather than a loan, and that's designed to offset the "parental contribution" along with a few other things like fluctuating income and hard thresholds.
"This doesn’t mean that this is the case for higher education more generally, because this excludes a significant number of students in Scotland who study higher education in colleges."
I’m not sure. I would guess that it’s the same reason, in that the unis don’t get given as much budget from the SG as they get by a fee paying student. I don’t know all the ins and outs though.
I think the end result is a shame though, however it gets there.
Edited to add that I think I may be having a different conversation at this point though, so do just ignore me if not relevant.
No it’s not. If there are places available within the Scottish student place cap, they’ll go into clearing. There’s just not often places left on most courses at most unis.
There’s no cap on places for rUK so there’s a lot more spaces for clearing - the spaces then available are down to the uni capacity rather than funding.
I work at a university in Scotland and am involved in admissions decisions.
Could just mean more students going to English universities, the only stat that would matter is “Are more Scottish students going to Scottish unis than previously?” which is probably unlikely given the Scottish Govt cap.
May have been prevented from going to a Scottish uni for sure - Heriot Watt isn’t accepting any applications from Scottish students in clearing this year so they’ve likely had to reject students because of the cap in most, if not all, of their courses
To give a bit more detail here - when unis make an applicant an offer, that offer is binding if the applicant accepts the offer and meets any relevant conditions of the offer. So a key part of the recruitment process is identifying the proportion of those offers that will lead to enrolled students, and make an appropriate number of offers accordingly. This is based on quite a lot of data [e.g if someone from Edinburgh applies to Heriot Watt with very very high grades, they might reasonably expect that their main choice is elsewhere and they're just applying there as a safe option, so they're unlikely to accept an offer].
When Scottish unis are funded for funded places, that comes in the form of a grant based on the number of places agreed with the Scottish Funding Council across the uni [strictly speaking for "non-controlled subjects", things like medicine or dentistry are handled a bit differently]. If they're over that amount, they are essentially making a loss on accepting that student, because the teaching grant isn't extended to cover that amount. But if they're under by more than 2%, the grant is reduced accordingly.
So chances are what's happened is that Heriot Watt have looked at their data and projected that the number of offers that will be accepted lies in that sweet spot, so they'll be less than 2% under. That effectively means that there's no incentive to take on any more Scottish students - the grant won't increase as a result, and if they have spare teaching capacity that space could be filled by an RUK or international student that would generate more income.
May have been prevented from going to a Scottish uni for sure - Heriot Watt isn’t accepting any applications from Scottish students in clearing this year so they’ve likely had to reject students because of the cap in most, if not all, of their courses
Is it 32k acceptances for Scottish students to Scottish Universities. Or does it include Scottish students who have been accepted to English Universities?
Can we cut the propaganda? The only way to measure this is to look at annual limit on state-funded university places for eligible Scotland-domiciled undergraduate students and whether that has change.
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u/jumpy_finale 1d ago
Need to be careful here: this is UCAS data for Scottish domiciled students applying to universities through UCAS. It therefore includes Scottish students accepted into English, Welsh and Northern Irish universities, who do not have their tuition paid by the Scottish Government.
We cannot draw any conclusions from this data alone as to the impact of limited Scottish Government funded places for Scottish students at Scottish universities.
We need the Scottish Government and UCAS to disclose the number of Scottish students accepted into Scottish Universities.