British universities are a modern-day racket

One of the great myths of Scottish higher education is that it’s free. Outside observers can be forgiven for making this error because Nicola Sturgeon asserts it so very often. She has boasted that ‘one of this government’s proudest achievements is the restoration of free higher education’, claimed to ‘stand for universal services, such as… free education’, and argued, naturally, that independence is ‘the only way to protect the advances that Scotland has made with devolution through the social contract, which has delivered vital universal benefits such as free university education’.

Now Audit Scotland, the public spending watchdog, reports a 185 per cent increase in loans authorised by the Student Awards Agency for Scotland over the past decade, rocketing from £187 million in 2008/09 to £533.6 million in 2018/19. Scottish and EU students don’t pay tuition fees at universities in Scotland (though English, Welsh and Northern Irish students do) so these loans mostly cover living costs, though there is also some bursary provision.