The third paper from the Carnegie Education Fund (CEF) and Ipsos Citizens’ Jury on higher education funding has today been published.

It looks at how members of the public made sense of Scotland’s different pathways into higher education – including colleges, universities and work‑based learning – and how they felt public funding should be prioritised across them.

This paper also shows that jurors began with a broad appreciation of the value of all pathways, but as they learned more about current funding models, financial pressures and graduate outcomes, their views on the importance of vocational training and work‑based learning strengthened and they began to question the current balance of investment.

They recognised the role that colleges, in particular, play in widening access and supporting learners with different needs within Scotland’s communities and they felt strongly that additional investment  is needed in colleges to unlock outcomes in the current environment.

However, they struggled to identify where this funding should come from and were wary of diverting resources away from universities, recognising that any shift in funding would have consequences for learners.

This left them grappling with a difficult tension: how to prioritise what they felt was urgently needed now without limiting future opportunity or undermining pathways that remain important to Scotland’s economy and society.

Download the Research Paper

The paper is intended as part of a wider series and does not tell the full story of the citizens’ jury. It should be read together with earlier papers on purpose and value, equity and access and methodology. The final thematic papers in this series will explore participants views on universities and will be released in coming weeks.

To find out more about the Citizens’ Jury and why it was commissioned, see the methodology paper.