Is the SNP changing its tune on free university places?

The SNP’s much trumpeted policy of free university tuition allows ‘radicals’ to indulge their fantasies of Scotland as a fair and compassionate country. Nationalist politicians sell the scheme as a way of opening up higher education to those who might previously have been priced out of post-school study. The reality is that the wealthiest are the scheme’s big winners: a higher proportion of children from better off backgrounds go on to university.

Is the SNP now having a long overdue rethink? Appearing before Holyrood’s finance committee on Tuesday, deputy first minister and finance secretary Shona Robison said 1,200 spaces for Scottish students would not be funded next year. When Labour MSP Michael Marra pointed out that a proposed £28.5 million budget cut would be the equivalent of a reduction of about 3,800 student places, Robison conceded that the number of student places cut might be higher than the figure she presented to MSPs.