By Shona Struthers, CEO, Colleges Scotland 

Today, after a decade of leading Colleges Scotland, I’m moving on to new opportunities. As I prepare to take my next steps, I’ve been keenly thinking about the meaning of opportunity and the risks around not providing everyone in Scotland with their chance to come to college. 

I say everyone because our colleges can fulfil that role – every person in Scotland should have the chance to learn, upskill, or retrain.

This is at risk because of the precarious fall in college funding, and which unfortunately may continue.

I might be one of the few people in Scotland who have spent time in all 24 of our colleges, from Shetland to Dumfries, and the Western Isles to Edinburgh. Each college is rightly proud of its own identity and distinctness in the communities they serve. Colleges are local landmarks, with millions of alumni, and in the Scottish cultural psyche have their own particular place. “I trained at the college” has a special meaning within industries like construction and hospitality, where employers will know they are taking on people with high quality skills and work experience. If you know, you know.

I’ve seen a huge change in the past 10 years - I’m pleased politicians from all parties now see and value the work that colleges do on a par with that of universities. And I’m pleased that in society parents, students and employers recognise college education as a really positive and successful destination which leads to potentially lucrative career paths. With skills shortages stalking many vital industries, we very much need and should value college graduates.

Unfortunately, the recognition boost has not been matched with investment. Since 2021/22, funding for colleges has dropped by a shocking 17% in real terms. This doesn’t seem to be by design, and of course I don’t believe that Ministers are deliberately defunding a huge part of the education system with any kind of nefarious intent. But for it to happen by drift or by accident is not acceptable either. I would ask Ministers to be careful and cautious ahead of the next Budget in December – colleges would say they are at the bottom of a scraped barrel with nothing left to cut. It would be helpful to have a firm and positive ambition for colleges, which more neatly matches investment to Scotland’s critical skills shortages – our colleges could ably fill those gaps. It would be helpful to have a plan for the future that means opportunities are guaranteed for this generation, and the next. Colleges are part of the public sector and yet no college is fully funded, which means a huge amount of pressure on leaders to keep colleges solvent as well as successful. 

Best-selling author Lee Child recently spoke passionately about the amputating effect of closing libraries, reducing the opportunities for people of all ages to expand their worlds. I would argue that reducing the opportunities for people to learn – and everyone in Scotland should have a college experience sometime in their lifetime – also has that amputating effect. The new skills, the friendships and networks, the spark of confidence, the qualifications gained could be lost without the security of a future place for the person that wants to come to college. Essentially – colleges can thrive and will thrive if given the opportunity to. When colleges thrive, Scotland thrives.