COURIER OPINION: UHI Perth College must ask difficult questions about its future

The Courier

10-05-2025

UHI Perth College faces an uncertain future as managers battle to save the important institution from a £2 million deficit.
The response by bosses has included alarming proposals to axe university degrees in a bid to plug the financial black hole. And less than a year after he joined UHI, finance chief Gavin Stevenson has quit.
The Courier has also revealed that a group of staff went on an expenses-paid trip to China.
While the budget of £8,000 will not have made a material contribution to the financial crisis, it poses serious questions about why the trip, organised to discuss the institution's international programmes, is necessary.
Local MP Pete Wishart has now told principal Dr Margaret Cook to 'consider her position' and take responsibility for the mess.
We understand the principal is on a leave of absence, with 'health reasons' cited by the institution as the reason she did
Trade union GMB has also posed a similar challenge and says staff and students feel 'abandoned' by the leadership of UHI Perth.
'Students and staff have first been failed and now abandoned by the executive team of UHI Perth led by the principal,' said Keir Greenway, a senior organiser with GMB Scotland.
The situation at the college is extremely concerning. Nearly 7,000 students are educated there every year, often studying for essential qualifications.
A threat to the college's future is a threat to our next generation and the wider economy.
But the issues at UHI Perth College appear remarkably familiar to the crisis at the University of Dundee – which The Courier has reported on extensively. Errors in judgement by senior managers have worsened the college's financial position.
But fundamentally that position is already weakened by policy decisions from government.
Much of the country's higher and further education sector appears to be at a tipping point.
In Fife, the principal of the local college has sounded the alarm about 'significant' funding challenges due to below-inflation settlements.
Jim Metcalfe fears that the below-inflation funding settlement from government this year will have a 'widely-felt' negative impact on staff and students.
This leaves principals with an unenviable set of choices about what a college can deliver. Too many businesses already say they cannot recruit the apprentices they need because of space limits at local colleges.
Right at the moment the economy is crying out for highly-trained graduates, colleges may be forced to roll back the number of places they can offer or reduce the number of courses they provide.
Similarl to Dundee University, the crisis at UHI Perth may yet prove to be in part be down to mismanagement – but the state of the sector more widely reveals an urgent need for the Scottish Government to look again at how colleges are funded.
While this moment of crisis may not be the appropriate time, discussions on the margins suggest a wider conversation is needed to discuss why the Fair City does not have its own distinct college similar to Aberdeen, Fife or Dundee.
A part of the University of the Highlands and Islands franchise, a partnership agreement allows the college to deliver UHI programmes and share facilities.
It also means that rather than a direct award, UHI Perth shares cash provided by the funding council on behalf of government across the 48 campuses in the partnership.
There is some concern it means the institution cannot properly adapt to the evolving needs of Perthshire or its economy – which are distinct from the demands of Inverness, Argyll or Moray.
Like the University of Dundee, UHI Perth must come clean about what has gone wrong.
It must be honest and, if necessary, brave enough to ask fundamental questions about its future.
That process must involve students, staff and local partners, and be rooted in a clear-eyed understanding of what the college is for – and what Perthshire needs it to be.