It would have seemed a good idea at the time. Alex Salmond vowed to do what Nick Clegg had not, by offering Scottish students free university education and keeping his word. It would be unlike, for example, any manifesto commitment to write-off student debt.
(Disclaimer, I am broadly in favour of tuition fees. It is the vote-grubbing, double-crossing chancers I cannot stand.)
But, how to pay for it? Previous legal pitfalls have included the matter of EU students being entitled to the same benefits as domestic students which, if it were acquiesced to, would lead to the peverse situation of students from elsewhere in the UK being charged (not that, I suspect, this would particularly concern Salmond).
So, ever the sub-state nationalist, he looked to compare Scotland with a third party and not her own population’s efforts. This time is was Ireland’s turn, and her scheme for charging EU students processing fees – paper, exam registration and wattknot – which could bring in upwards of £1,500 per year per student.
Alas, as it quickly became apparent, the Irish model works by additionally means-testing domestic students, with some 60 % of them having to pay.
And the brickbats keep coming, as the Education Secretary, Mike Russell is lambasted by the Director of CBI Scotland:
“Our politicians should avoid making rash promises that they may not be able to fulfil without signing a blank cheque or underfunding our universities or other important areas of the Scottish economy into the future.
“If, as a country, we are going to put Scotland’s HE funding on a competitive and sustainable basis for the future, more work needs to be done and our politicians must be prepared to take hard decisions in the overall long-term interests of Scotland.”
To be fair to Russell, Scottish Labour does not avoid criticism for its support for a graduate tax which students would be able to avoid without emigrating to another country.