The Scottish Office and the revival of the idea of a university for the Highlands and Islands in the 1990s

The rejection of the Inverness campaign for Scotland's fifth university following the Robbins report in 1963/4 was a moment of deep disappointment in the Highlands and Islands. The idea of a higher-education institution for the highlands and islands did not, however, disappear, as the establishment of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig (SMO) demonstrates. This paper uses relatively recently released government records to look at the interactions between campaigners and officials in the 1990s. The 'devolution' of funding for Higher Education in 1993 with the creation of Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC) created a new landscape even before the establishment of a Scottish Parliament in 1999. The paper will explore changing attitudes at the centre to the idea and look at the way that the campaign evolved in the 1990s. The paper is by way follows Prof Cameron’s 2017 article, ‘University realities: the Inverness Campaign to establish Scotland's fifth university’. Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 67, 9-50.

Prof Ewen Cameron is the Sir William Fraser Professor of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh. His overarching research interest in the position of Scotland within the Union and the relationship between Scotland and the UK state has prompted his recent work on the history of Scottish Universities in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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