Extended interview with Prof. Sir Duncan Rice

• Broadcast Date:

  Thursday, October 8, 2009 on stv

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• Extended interview with Prof. Sir Duncan Rice

  Declining government funding could see Scotland's universities following their American cousins and going private within the next decade.
  
  Professor Sir Duncan Rice, Principal of Aberdeen University, says competing demands for under pressure government budgets will probably see state funding continue to slide.
  
  At the moment Aberdeen, one of Scotland's ancient universities, currently receives 38% of its core funding from the Scottish Funding Council.
  
  The principal said: "Once that's down to about 20%, as it will be because the trend lines are moving in that direction, you have to ask yourself if it would make a great deal more sense to get us out of the hair of government."
  
  The rest of the university's money already comes from competitively won funds, private business and fees from foreign students.
  
  In an exclusive interview with STV the leading academic called for the debate on the future of higher education to be opened-up.
  
  To watch an extended interview with Professor Sir Duncan Rice click here>>
  
  He said: "I think it would be extremely foolish to exclude the right to becoming private at least as a topic for debate and possibly as something much more than that.
  
  "In the end it would be completely unacceptable to have a system where clever children who don't have any advantages in life couldn't come to university. People wonder whether that kind of protection might be possible and I suggest such people look across the Atlantic and note that the President of the United States paid $50,000 a year for his education and came from the wrong side of the tracks.
  
  ���He was protected by scholarships and by the efforts of Harvard to make sure underprivileged people are looked after. I think we could do the same and have much stronger universities and no decline in social access."
  
  Sir Duncan spent much of his academic career in America where he led one of the country's most successful higher education fund-raising campaigns, raising more than a $1billion.
  
  The academic took on the job of principal at Aberdeen in 1996 and is today celebrating the announcement that the university is now within the top 0.5% of universities in the world.
  
  According to The Times rankings it is the fastest rising university in the world, jumping from its ranking of 153rd to 129th this year.
  
  

• Video Tags

  University of Aberdeen, professor sir duncan rice, News

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