(Image: Jane Barlow/PA Wire)
I have spent the past several weeks having hours of difficult conversations about universities.
Sometimes these were philosophically taxing, sometimes emotionally, and sometimes ever so slightly physical.
They have all been important for helping build a clearer sense of what is happening in and what is happening to the sector, especially in the wake of the University of Edinburgh’s 90 degree programme closures and ongoing industrial dispute over cost savings and job cuts.
Much of the discussion around Edinburgh’s controversial programme closures has focused heavily on the local impact on staff, students, recruitment, and reputation. The conversations that it has triggered are relevant to the entire sector, however,
Questions around the university’s programme closures – which university leaders say are unconnected to the wider £140 million savings target or any potential job losses – run the gamut.
What will be saved thanks to these changes? What will be lost? Why now?
Will staff lose jobs? Will the university save money? Will the university lose money?
Is this decisive action in one fell swoop, or just the first domino to fall?
I could go on for the rest of my word limit.
The hallways of the University of Edinburgh have been quiet recently, with UCU staff embarked on a five-week strike. (Image: Jane Barlow/PA Wire)
Some of these questions have already been answered, or at least addressed. Others will take time, and others have only become more complicated and confusing.
One question, though, is discussed only obliquely and may prove the most important in the long run: What is the point of a university?
This isn't a new discussion point, and countless academics, politicians, and commentators have debated it in pubs, coffee shops, offices, and on stages.
However, it has recently taken on new life, moving out of theory and into a reality where decision-makers can trigger significant change with their answers.
Rhetorical questions sometimes deserve answers
Although the sector has discussed identity internally for years, a few reasons explain why the recent saga at the University of Edinburgh has given the topic greater urgency.
First, the timing.
The Herald broke news of the university’s 90 programme closures on 17 September. Less than a month earlier, the Future Framework for the Sustainability and Success of Scotland’s Universities project released its first publication. It calculated, for the first time in years, the monetary value of the funding gap facing the university sector: £200 million.
Its more detailed findings painted a stark picture of the sector. Universities' funding and income are not sufficient to sustain current levels of teaching or research; they are only able to recover roughly 82% of the costs of teaching Scottish students, 72% of the costs of research, and international tuition fees – however volatile they have proven to be – remain the most important source of income.
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This is the wider background against which universities such as Glasgow Caledonian, Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and others are making significant portfolio changes alongside staff cuts and cost-saving.
Edinburgh, however, is unlike most other universities making major changes. As reported extensively, the University of Edinburgh is pursuing a savings target of £140m, originally set to stave off a projected deficit.
That deficit has not yet materialised, the savings target has not changed, and more than 950 staff members have left through various redundancy schemes since it was announced.
While universities such as Dundee have taken strong and controversial savings measures from a position of financial distress, Edinburgh is pursuing its changes from a position of relative strength in the sector.
Context is key
The most recent Scottish Funding Council (SFC) sustainability reports showed that Edinburgh was one of seven universities that posted an adjusted operating surplus in 2024/2025.
The institution also stands out as one of Scotland’s ancient universities, alongside Aberdeen, Glasgow, and St Andrews.
This moniker comes with no shortage of cultural and economic currency and cachet. Edinburgh and the other ancient institutions are known worldwide, even by those with no real connection to, or interest in, higher education beyond perhaps having attended a university.
Edinburgh’s strengths, history, budget, and reputation paint a picture of an institution that can take risks, absorb losses, and choose to preserve areas of research and study that may represent ideals more than returns on investment, even in times of wider crisis.
(Image: Supplied)
As the Future Framework analysis showed, universities overall struggle to claim a full return on investment, particularly in research. When the university announced closures of 90 degree programmes, there was a sudden public outcry, but beneath the surface, more fundamental questions emerged.
The university has said the closures are not financially motivated and represent a changing strategy towards how certain low-enrolment disciplines will be approached and taught.
Many of the closures are of highly specialised degrees, some joint honours and some single. Many were culturally significant subjects such as Scottish Literature or Celtic studies, or topical ones such as Outdoor Education.
Rather than existing as standalone degrees, these disciplines will be incorporated into broader courses of study. As much as the move is strategic from the university’s perspective, conversations with staff who have taught many of these courses suggest it is also ideological.
Staff members on the picket line, on the phone, and on the train have all told me that they are starting to piece together a picture of what is happening at their institution.
The fact that the university has continued to stave off any predicted deficit and yet is still pursuing a process of restructuring and, in the end, savings, leaves them with a feeling about the closures that one striking staff member stated clearly: “If this isn’t about saving money or cutting jobs, then it’s just what they want to do. And that’s a shame.”
If not Edinburgh, where?
Academics, those in the union and unaffiliated, have found themselves toeing a line in their reactions to these closures.
Beyond the major talking points that have dominated headlines, press releases, rallies, and picket lines, many staff members recognise that, in many cases, the closures do not represent an abandonment of these areas of study.
Speaking as if they do may help add pressure on decision-makers with stronger rhetoric, but, as many have told me, it also risks turning away prospective students and researchers and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
New College, the University of Edinburgh's Divinity School, is one of many within the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences that has recently announced programme closures. (Image: Gene Samit)
At the same time, however, these closures undeniably represent a change in how these disciplines are taught. Staff and leadership disagree over whether this change is positive, and some staff members worry it marks the start of a slow slide toward obscurity for these disciplines.
In many ways, staff are as open to separating the closures from financial savings as the university’s leadership has been. For many I spoke to, these disciplines are worthwhile and provide public and academic goods that require support and cross-subsidy.
Cross-subsidisation has propped up institutions across the sector for years, as shown by the extent to which routine operations are funded with income from international student tuition.
There is a sense that universities, or higher education in general, should facilitate blue-sky thinking, learning, and research opportunities across the full academic spectrum, regardless of whether each pursuit is a moneymaker.
Every institution is different, however, and Scotland is home to a wide range of universities offering a wide range of services and specialities to staff, students, and the public.
Some are specialised by design. Others have found a core strength and built upon it.
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Others have still retained, at least in the public imagination, a reputation for being everything to everyone, where no discipline is too small and no idea too far-fetched to pursue.
This expectation was always an idealised version of reality and probably never quite fair to place on any institution, but the vaulted halls and plazas at the University of Edinburgh certainly evoke a space that serves the full expanse of human imagination and ingenuity.
When I put that idea to Professor Sir Peter Mathieson, the university's principal, he did not dispute the civic mission.
"Everybody wants to be a special case," he said. "But you can't have only the special cases because who's going to make them sustainable?"
Asked what a university is for, he called it "a place of opportunity".
But there are conditions, he went on: "It has to have infrastructure, it has to have staff, and it has to be able to pay its way. Otherwise it won't continue to exist."
This is why the University of Edinburgh's restructuring is forcing a fundamental re-examination of what a seat of higher learning should be. While leadership emphasises efficiency and broader curriculum changes, critics argue that sacrificing dedicated pathways risks damaging academic reputation.
If an institution with Edinburgh's historical standing and relative financial strength cannot sustain these niche fields, it raises a question I have seen posed rhetorically but should be taken seriously and answered.
If not at Edinburgh, where else will highly specialised degrees find a home?