Seòmar agus comataidhean

But it is—

There is a fair degree of urgency around developing that commercial office, and it would be wise to move on with that as quickly as we can. We are meeting a number of colleges this month to discuss some proposals that are specific to each college’s needs. We have been having a conversation with colleges in their entirety about whether they perceive that there are still impediments to rebalancing their offering in their localities to better meet the needs of the economy. If there are, we have asked them what they are and what we can do to help. That work has been driven by the SFC.

I go back to the point about flexibility. There are some developing conversations about what we can do to support individual institutions and empower their principals to get on and better align their offering to the needs of the area in which they operate.

Do you mean in a broad sense?

Mr Marra has the advantage of having formerly worked at the university and has lines into the university. As a minister, I do not oversee the individual finances of one institution after another; that is not my role at all. However, as I said, since the announcement of the £30 million deficit, the SFC has been actively engaging with the university and has sought the numbers behind how that deficit has been reached. I expect that, in addition to what the university does, the SFC will develop its understanding so that we know what happened at Dundee and whether that points to potential risks elsewhere.

We must learn from what has happened in Dundee. That is why I keep stressing that I am reluctant to speculate at this stage. We should all desist from speculating, because, until we understand exactly what happened, there is a risk that we exacerbate the situation and the level of concern. That is not to say that, once provided, the report or the explanation will not create further concern.

It is also the case that what has often been cited is a statement by someone in the university who has been represented as saying, “The university could fail.” However, I think what was said was, “If we don’t take steps to address this, it is so serious that it could fail.”

All that I can say to Mr Marra is that, from my conversation with the chair of court—and from the subsequent conversations that I know that the SFC has had with Dundee university—there is an optimism that it will get through this. There will be some pain attached to it, but it will get through it. Indeed, it is essential that it does, because it is an important institution in the Scottish university landscape.

Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. I anticipate that there will be a report. I think that an explanation needs to be provided because of the element of public funding. It needs to be provided for the staff and students. We need to understand how the situation occurred. I fully expect that there will be a report and I will reinforce that expectation in my conversation with the SFC.

Of course, it should be available to the committee to take a view on the nature of that report. Those are public institutions and public entities that are partly publicly funded, whether or not they are stand-alone institutions, and I would fully expect that an explanation will be available of how the situation has arisen.

I will check the Official Report, convener, because I think that I said that I would have “expected” that to happen, rather than “hoped”. It is a natural reaction for chairs of court to say to their vice-chancellors, “Have you seen this? Are we absolutely assured of our position?”

I want to see what the SFC makes of this in the context of what comes out of Dundee. As I have said, if there needs to be some movement on the governance arrangements—or, perhaps more accurately, the oversight arrangements—we are open to considering that, and we will do that in conjunction with the university sector.

The cabinet secretary has led on that issue on behalf of the portfolio, so, if you do not mind, she is probably best placed to answer that question.

I dealt with the £70 million underlying deficit—if one accepts that figure—in a previous answer, when I outlined some of the measures that have been taken in response to it.

On the four colleges being in significant difficulty, the SFC works closely with individual institutions as and when it emerges that they have an issue. That often requires that colleges come forward and identify to the SFC that they have issues of that kind.

In no way am I looking to dodge your question, but it is difficult to answer because there has to be a dialogue between the SFC and the colleges. Ministers do not deal with the finances of individual colleges. If a college comes forward and suggests that it has a short-term or a long-term difficulty, there will be engagement between the SFC, the institution and any regional body that might be involved to ascertain the nature of the problem and how it might be best addressed and then to react to it.

That goes to my earlier point about the need for the SFC to have a bit of flexibility in its financing, so that it has those moneys when it needs to step in and provide support. Of course, when the SFC does that, the institution concerned is required to demonstrate that it is on a path towards sustainability. Providing support cannot be an on-going, constant process where the institution is not trying to achieve a more stable position than the one that it is currently in.

There are a number of figures being bandied about. As I said earlier, if we trace the funding that goes to our institutions and pick one year and compare it against another, we see that there are different positions.

I accept that universities can reasonably argue that the funding that they receive, in real terms, has gone down. I accept that—we can argue about the extent of it, but I accept the premise. That is why, as part of our discussions with the universities, we have been looking at what more we can do, beyond the obvious funding streams that sit within education.

Our universities contribute so much to what we are doing. For example, we have been working closely with health colleagues on workforce planning. What opportunities lie with the universities? We are looking at expanding the graduate apprenticeship offering—there is real potential there. However, I recognise that that will require additionality for universities, and that they cannot simply use the places that they have. Steve Decent, the principal of Glasgow Caledonian University, is leading a piece of work on that for me.

We are seeking to maximise access to our universities through the broad spectrum of Government funding, in order to reflect the impact that they have on the work of the Government and the economy.