Universities urge next Scottish parliament to secure long-term prosperity through stable funding, skills investment and research leadership

Scotland’s universities have called on all political parties ahead of the 2026 Scottish Parliament election to back a long-term plan to secure the stability and success of a sector that underpins more than £17 billion of economic activity each year and supports over 55,000 jobs.

The manifesto published by Universities Scotland, the sector’s representative body, warns that global uncertainty, rapid technological change and demographic pressures mean Scotland must make deliberate choices now to secure prosperity, resilience and opportunities for the next generation.

The document, Our Universities in Support of Scotland, states that universities are already ‘core national assets’. However, it claims their ability to flourish and drive change is at risk without immediate action. This maifesto mirrors our Blueprint The Art of the Possible, which was supported by University Scotland and found three reasons for the problems facing Scottish higher education: falling government funding, a sudden drop in international students and inflation and employment cost pressures.

The most important step, the sector says, is full and ongoing engagement with the Future Framework for Sustainable and Successful Universities. This major joint initiative was established in December 2025 by Universities Scotland and the Scottish Government to review university funding and propose reforms aimed at securing the sector’s future for the next 20 years. It is due to report in the autumn.

The manifesto highlights the fact that 11 institutions are in deficit and warns that decades of underinvestment has left an £850 million estate backlog and calls on the next government to reintroduce £100 million of low-interest borrowing to enable essential repairs, modernisation and progress towards net-zero campuses.

The manifesto also urges a fundamental shift in Scotland’s skills narrative. Universities remain the largest contributors to the nation’s high-level skills needs, but the manifesto claims policy debates often falsely frame ‘vocational’ and ‘academic’ routes as opposites.

Instead, the document calls for universities to be embedded as equal partners in skills planning and for immediate reforms to accelerate graduate apprenticeships and fully-funded ‘earn and learn’ models. It proposes a £7.5 million annual Future Skills Fund to support flexible retraining in growth industries.

Commenting, Prosper chief executive Sara Thiam said:

We welcome the publication of Universities Scotland’s manifesto for the Holyrood election. In particular, we are pleased to see the progress in setting up the Future Framework to review higher education funding, which was a key ask of our own Blueprint for the Scottish economy. It is critical for the next Scottish Government to engage seriously with the conclusions of the review and to work in partnership with the sector to put our world-leading universities on a sustainable financial footing.