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I am simply making the point that we all want more money to be spent on every aspect of education. Of course we do—absolutely. However, there is a finite amount of money. I absolutely agree with you that a discussion needs to be had about what future financing would look like.

That is a reasonable point; I will take it away and talk to the SFC about it. There is no doubt that such things damage the attractiveness of institutions. However, let us remember that Dundee university has been a highly successful university with a great international reputation. Its reputation will recover from this. I will incorporate your point in our discussions with the SFC.

I would like to think that, if representatives of Universities Scotland were sitting here today, they would concur with what I am about to say. The relationship between the Government, the SFC and the university sector is far better than it has been in the past, and that manifests itself in an open and on-going dialogue around future funding and a variety of other things.

Our premise, which I think is accepted by the university sector, is that free tuition is a central tenet of the offering. You will probably be aware, Mr Briggs, of a report that was published two years ago by the University and College Union. It suggested that, had we not had that offering in Scotland, up to two thirds of our students would, at the very least, have had to think hard about whether they could go to university.

Morally, it is important to us that those young people who want to go to university are able to do so. Fundamentally, it would undermine our universities if many of our indigenous students were not able to go to university. We accept that free tuition is here to stay, and I think that most parties do. It is perfectly reasonable for the university sector to want to start a conversation about what future funding looks like. We are open to those conversations.

On the point about the instability of universities, I do not think that any of us can sit here and say that some of the challenges that our universities are facing are entirely down to the funding model. There are other things at play. We cannot lose sight of the impact that the migration policies and the articulation of previous UK Governments on the subject of migration have had an enormous detrimental effect on our universities and their ability to recruit. I am not just talking about Scottish universities; that is also the case in England. We can talk about whether there is an overreliance on international students as part of the funding model, but the simple fact is that our universities have been side-swiped by migration policy. It is not simply about what is implemented—even a conversation can have an effect. There was a further schism towards the end of the last Westminster parliamentary session when the then Prime Minister asked the Migration Advisory Committee simply to look at whether there had been abuses of the postgraduate study visa, and that had a detrimental impact.

We are working very closely with our universities on a variety of fronts. We are open to discussions about future funding models and what that would look like, accepting that free tuition is here to stay. We are also doing quite a significant piece of work with our universities on promoting Scotland as a “come to study” destination and, at the same time, trying to de-risk the international aspect. Some of our institutions are overly reliant on certain markets, such as Nigeria. A few weeks ago, I met representatives from a number of south-east Asian countries and we discussed the barriers to more students from that region coming to Scotland, so that we can broaden the international presence. Some of the issues that were raised included a perception about whether they would be welcome in the UK, because of the rhetoric on migration. Another aspect was the cost that is associated with visas and how long it takes to get them resolved. We are doing a great deal of work with universities to try to address some of those challenges and we have are working jointly on international promotion. There is no complacency on our part, if that is what you are referring to, on this issue. There is considerable on-going dialogue with the sector.

I do not think that we have a target in mind, but I note that the income that the college sector has garnered from commercial sources has pretty much flatlined at £192 million for a number of years now. Given that some colleges are doing quite well in that space, that raises some questions.

A number of colleges have spoken to us about this, saying that, although they want to expand their commercial offering, they simply do not have the capacity to do so. Therefore, we are actively working with a number of colleges on the matter and there is a dialogue going on about how we can assist them in growing the opportunities that exist.

As for your point about engagement with NHS boards, the example that you gave is a very good one. Indeed, I could point to West Lothian College and NHS Lothian, where some really good work is going on. It is not so much that the Government has been pushing colleges to do that sort of thing; it is more about the sharing of best practice and understanding what works well in localities and what can be taken elsewhere.

Through the tripartite group, we have been taking a direct look at the good practice that exists in developing commercial opportunities, in upskilling and reskilling and in providing specific courses for the public or private sectors, and how we go about putting that in place. Out of that has come an understanding on our part that colleges will need a little bit of support in that regard. Something that is being discussed at the moment—I make it clear that this is in its very initial stage and might not come to anything—is whether we can support the creation of a national colleges hub that would bring in all of that best practice and that colleges could tap into to grow their commercial income in order, as a result, to become less dependent on public sources.

Given the state of public finances over recent years, it would be wise to develop that without in any way diminishing the existing offering. There is a lot of work going on, and I would be happy to write to the committee in due course as we put some more meat on the bones of that.

In terms of how you have presented it, no. However, I said earlier that we are working very closely in partnership with the university sector on our international promotion. In fact, in answer to an earlier question, I said that I had engaged with south-east Asian countries to try to bring more of their students here in order to de-risk the current model. I do recognise the point that Mr Greer makes. We are not, as I think he has tried to suggest, saying to individual universities, “You need to reduce your reliance on particular markets in the next five to 10 years.” We are working closely with the sector in the international student space, and one of our objectives is to de-risk a situation that the committee—particularly Willie Rennie—has discussed on previous occasions.

I hope that I can remember all of that. I understand entirely how deeply unsettling and worrying a time this is for the staff, particularly given the way in which the situation just crept up on them. I have heard the suggestion that small surpluses and then perhaps small losses were being anticipated, but nothing on that scale. I hope that Maggie Chapman will appreciate that, in my position as minister, I am not going to engage in speculation about how the situation has arisen. We need to allow the institution a little time—not for much longer, but it is working through this—to bottom out how it got to the situation and, of course, to develop an appropriate and robust recovery plan.

Since the institution announced its financial challenges, the SFC has been actively engaged with it. I also spoke to the chair of court on the evening when the principal stepped down. My offer was that whatever help or assistance the university required from the SFC would be provided, and the SFC has been actively involved with the university ever since in two ways—to assist the process of bottoming out what happened, and then to scrutinise the recovery plan.

Maggie Chapman’s points about fair work were well made. I am sure that the SFC is watching this meeting and, if it is not alive to those points, I will ensure that it is. The trade unions should be engaged in the development of the recovery plan. If compulsory redundancies have been mooted without the appropriate processes having been put in place, I will ask the SFC to look at that.

In the context of providing answers for the staff and others, including the members of the Scottish Parliament who are in this room, I note that I am in no way trying to make excuses, but a new interim finance director is in place and the university is working through getting to the bottom of how the situation occurred and developing a robust plan. Although those questions might be perfectly legitimate and understandable, it might not be appropriate for the university to provide partial answers at this stage. However, I expect that, when it has gone through the process, it will provide answers to the staff and others.

On the point about governance, as Maggie Chapman said, universities are stand-alone institutions but they receive public money. A proportion of the University of Dundee’s income comes from public funds. As the cabinet secretary alluded to earlier, as part of the work that we have been doing on the forthcoming legislation, we have been exploring the governance and oversight powers that sit with the SFC for colleges and universities. To be honest, that work has probably leaned more towards colleges because, as I embarked on a programme of empowering principals in the college sector, I wanted to ensure that there was appropriate oversight at the local and national levels to give ministers confidence about the use of public funds.

If anything comes out of the work that is under way at the University of Dundee to ascertain how it got into this situation, and if—I stress that—some of the concerns that Maggie Chapman has identified turn out to be justified, we will look at the context of the forthcoming legislation as it goes through Parliament to see whether any measures might need to be put into the bill to give the SFC powers of oversight and intervention. If that is necessary, I am happy to commit today to working with individual members and the committee on that goal. However, I stress that, while I recognise how completely unsettling what has happened at the University of Dundee has been, we need to allow it a bit of time to provide the facts on how it arose. From that, we will look at the development of its recovery plan and reflect on how it got into the situation.

The SFC’s next meeting with senior management will be tomorrow. I will make sure that it is sighted on the points that have been made about fair work and other things in advance so that it can raise them with the management.

I touched earlier on the fact that we have to accept that a number of factors contribute to the challenges that universities face. The international student issue is hugely significant in that regard. It is as significant as your point about the level of public funding that is provided for universities.

We cannot have a situation in which a university is prospering and might be getting ahead of itself with something like a big international student influx and expanding because it sees that as a permanent feature, then something comes along to change that. That might not be just migration policy: currency devaluations might have an impact. However, we cannot get away from the fact that the drop in the number of international students has probably been the biggest single factor in creating a challenge.

I am simply saying that, if I accept your point about funding, I hope that you accept my point about the income from international students and how a number of factors are at play.

I am saying that we are exploring those sources; I am not saying that we have found them.

We have to strike a balance in the budget. There are a lot of competing demands, in education and more widely. I do not mean to be flippant but, if you have a proposal that involves putting more money into capital for colleges, you are perfectly at liberty to bring that forward in the context of the budget.

We have made it clear to the SFC that we expect part of the additional funding that has gone to universities to be used to enhance the student experience. That would partly cover what you have alluded to.

I join you in paying tribute to the universities, because the progress that we have made in widening access is overwhelmingly down to them, as a sector. They have done some fantastic stuff and you are right to note that it is not just the modern universities that have done that.

The biggest impediment to reaching the next target is not the amount of money but the ability to get to all the students who could be captured by the policy. The well-intentioned legislation that was passed by the Parliament has worked well to a point, but we need to go beyond that.

Next week—I think—I will chair a meeting with the stakeholder group on widening access to look at what more we can do. In the short term, we are running a pilot in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire to look at data on free school meals. There is a data-sharing problem in Scotland that is holding us back.

We are looking into what more we can do to support our universities on the journey, because we must enable them to achieve the target. We are also looking into what we need to do in the longer term. As I say, in this instance, it is not so much about the amount of money as it is about how we enable the universities to achieve their targets.