28th September 2026
University Cuts Are No Longer Just About Staff – Students Could Pay the Price
Five weeks of strike action at the University of Edinburgh has begun, following similar industrial action at the University of Dundee.
Edinburgh staff represented by the University and College Union are taking strike action from 28 September until 30 October, covering five weeks at the beginning of the teaching semester. At Dundee, staff began five weeks of strike action on 21 September.
For students, the immediate concern is obvious. Lectures, tutorials and other teaching may be disrupted, while students can face uncertainty over assessments, access to staff and the normal support they expect from their university.
But the strikes are really symptoms of something much bigger.
Scottish universities are facing a prolonged financial squeeze which is increasingly affecting not just the people who work in universities, but the education being offered to students.
At Dundee, the university says its staff headcount has already fallen by 675 between August 2024 and May 2026. It says it needs to make a further £20 million of annual savings, with about 190 additional jobs currently proposed for reduction. The university has also restructured its academic organisation, reducing eight Schools to four Faculties.
That inevitably raises a question.
What happens to students when reducing the workforce becomes one of the main ways a university balances its books?
The answer is not necessarily that universities suddenly close their doors.
The changes can be much more gradual.
There can be fewer lecturers, larger classes, fewer specialist modules, less individual contact with academic staff and less support for students.
And then there is the question of courses themselves.
Universities Scotland reported last year that 55% of universities in a UK-wide survey had consolidated courses, compared with 23% a year earlier, while 18% had closed departments. The organisation has warned that Scotland's universities are facing financial pressures which are increasingly making it difficult to protect staff and students from the consequences.
That matters because a university place is not simply a place at a particular institution.
For a student, the choice of university and course can determine where they live, what career they can enter and whether they have to move hundreds of miles from home.
For students from rural areas such as Caithness, that issue can be particularly important.
A young person may have the grades to attend university but want to study a particular subject at Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh or another institution. If courses gradually disappear or departments are reduced, the issue is not necessarily fewer university places overall. It can be fewer choices of what and where to study.
There is an important complication in the funding argument.
The Scottish Funding Council has increased university resource funding for 2026-27 by £25 million, or 3.2%, with teaching funding rising by 3.3%. It says the allocation of non-controlled funded student places is unchanged from the previous year.
So it would be wrong to say that the Scottish Government has simply frozen university funding for 15 years.
But universities argue that the amount of money available needs to be considered against inflation, rising costs and the number of students being supported.
Universities Scotland says public funding invested in each Scottish undergraduate place was 22% lower in real terms in 2024-25 than in 2013-14. Nine universities reported adjusted operating deficits in 2023-24, while the sector's underlying operating surplus fell dramatically from £211.7 million to £17.2 million in one year.
That provides some context for why universities are cutting jobs and reviewing courses even though headline funding has not simply stood still.
There is another complication.
Universities are businesses as well as educational institutions. They have buildings to maintain, pension costs, energy bills, technology costs and thousands of employees. They also compete internationally for students and research income.
The Scottish Funding Council itself acknowledges the need to improve the "unit of resource" available for publicly funded student places and refers to the financial sustainability of universities as an issue requiring attention.
The danger is that the consequences of financial pressure become visible to students only after decisions have already been made.
A student might discover that the module they wanted has disappeared.
A specialist lecturer might no longer be there.
A department might have been merged with another.
A course might still exist but offer fewer options.
None of these changes necessarily makes the headlines in the way a five-week strike does.
Yet collectively they could change the university experience considerably.
There is also a wider question for Scotland.
If universities cannot maintain their present staffing and course structures with the funding available, what happens over the next five or ten years?
The Scottish Funding Council says there is currently no overall reduction in non-controlled funded student places for 2026-27.
But that does not guarantee that every course, department or institution will remain the same.
The future could therefore involve not necessarily fewer university places, but a different university system: fewer courses in some subjects, fewer staff, greater pressure to attract international students and increasing concentration of specialist provision in particular universities.
For students and their families, that may ultimately be the more important issue than the current strikes.
The dispute may be about jobs today.
But the decisions being made to balance university finances could determine what education is available to Scottish students tomorrow.