Budget funding for ‘essential’ colleges and universities hailed by lecturer
James Mahon also said his sector cannot afford to face more cuts.
A lecturer has welcomed funding for the “essential” college sector in the Scottish Budget, while questioning the amount of money given to the University of Dundee.
James Mahon praised the support for further and higher education in Finance Secretary Shona Robison’s draft Budget for 2026/27, which she outlined at Holyrood on Tuesday.
Dr Mahon has taught journalism at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) for the last decade.
The 35-year-old is due to leave UWS towards the end of January through voluntary severance and will go on to work full-time with the Open University (OU), where he currently also works in a part-time capacity.
Discussing the announcement in the Budget of up to £20 million for the University of Dundee, Dr Mahon told the Press Association: “That’s great for them, I don’t want people to lose their jobs.
“But it’s interesting how much they get when other institutions are struggling. £20 million is a lot for Dundee University.”
He praised commitments for the college sector, saying: “The more support for the college sector, the better.
“We’re at a turning point for higher and further education, we can’t keep cutting and cutting and cutting.
“These places are essential, if we lose them they’re gone for good.”
Dr Mahon also stressed the importance of tax cuts for graduates, saying: “The big concern for us is always graduate employment, especially in the current economic situation.
“So any kind of reduction in taxes for basic rate or intermediate earners is really important, because a lot of graduate positions are between £24,000 and £35,000.”
The father-of-one said the consequences of more budget cuts in the education sector “would be harrowing”.
He said: “We’re in a very turbulent period in higher education in Scotland, we’ve had a lot of really talented, really gifted educators either lose their jobs or apply to lose their jobs, or to go through severance schemes in the last six to 12 months.
“The concern is that when you lose that expertise, and there’s no opportunity for those jobs to be replaced, the concern is that any more cuts at a time when we’re already vulnerable would be harrowing.”
At the OU, Dr Mahon is currently serving as a part-time tutor, but he will become a course designer for its school of creative industries when he goes full-time.
Meanwhile, second-year Glasgow University student Jason Macmillan stressed the importance of free tuition for higher education in Scotland.
He said: “It’s good to see the Scottish Government is continuing their funding of universities and further education.”
The 18-year-old international relations student said he would not have been able to go to the university without his tuition fees being covered.
Mr Macmillan, from Kirkintilloch, said: “Making sure that everyone in the country has equal access to education is obviously of vital importance. I see the benefits of free tuition for myself.
“The only way that we can go into the future with a stronger economy is by having a stronger workforce.
“The way we get that stronger workforce is through putting people through university education, bringing in high-paying jobs, and allowing people to come over here and to learn and to work.”
With a number of Scottish universities suffering financial difficulty, he said many of the problems came from “university management itself”.
He said talk from some university chiefs of a potential return to a fee-paying system for Scottish students would cause “anxiety”.
He added: “The fact that you don’t have to pay tuition fees is what keeps a lot of people in Scotland and at Scottish universities.
“If you’re reintroducing tuition fees, what’s going to stop someone from going ‘might as well just go somewhere else’ – and taking that their smarts and their brains elsewhere.”
