The Principal and Vice-Chancellor sets out the high-level vision guiding the University's decision-making and addresses misconceptions about the changes ahead.
Ten years from now the University will continue to be highly international in its composition and its outlook, attracting the brightest and best students and staff from Scotland, the rest of the UK and from all over the world.
Edinburgh will continue to offer a wide choice of high-quality education and research programmes addressing societally important needs for skills and new knowledge, built on disciplinary and interdisciplinary strengths.
Importantly, the University will be financially resilient, able to thrive despite geopolitical and other complexities, able to invest in its students and staff and seize opportunities when they arise.
Edinburgh will be an even better place to study or work than it is today because things will be done differently, embracing modern technologies but not being dictated to by them, supporting students and staff with more efficient and people-friendly methodologies.
The University will continue to be one of Scotland’s biggest employers, able to recruit and develop people’s careers at all stages.
Uncertainty and pessimism in the current circumstances are fully understandable. Misinformation and disinformation are not acceptable.
As an institution devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, we have a duty to challenge falsehoods and explain our intentions openly so that our students, staff and supporters – including those who may join us in the future – understand where we are going and why.
For example, the University is not turning its back on its Scottishness and will not do so. Our role in the study and teaching of Scotland’s past and present is an important element of our vision and our contribution to the wider world.
The changes being made across our programmes are intended to give students greater flexibility and encourage them to explore subjects and disciplines they might not otherwise have considered.
As a result, more students at Edinburgh will have the opportunity to study Scotland’s rich histories, literatures, cultures and languages – including Gaelic – as part of their degree pathway, not fewer.
The focus on internationalisation will remain a priority.
The reforms to the organisation of incoming and outgoing international student experiences are designed to make things better and more inclusive, not to stop them happening, so that students are offered improved and different ways to develop global perspectives, intercultural understanding and relevant skills.
Students studying at Edinburgh now and those planning to join in the near future can be confident that the disciplines they wish to study will continue and that, if they seize the opportunities presented to them, they will graduate with Edinburgh qualifications that are respected all over the world.
If anyone still believes the rhetoric that the current financial challenges are imagined, exaggerated or Edinburgh-specific, I recommend that they should read this report: The 2026 Reckoning: Financial sustainability, solvency risk, and policy options for UK higher education.
The only reason that Edinburgh is not one of the universities listed as at highest risk is because of the tough decisions that we have already taken. We should be pleased that our fate is in our own hands: no-one is coming to rescue us.
When I am confronted with “but we are not in a deficit”, my answer is “true, but the only reason we are not is that we have been taking decisions for the last couple of years that have prevented a deficit”.
It is a fact that in the financial year 2025-26 we made £73 million worth of savings by measures such as voluntary severance, restraint on staff recruitment, freezing of promotions etc.
At the end of the year our financial surplus was £16 million. Do the maths: without the savings we made, the deficit would have been £57 million and we would have been in a similar position to the 38 universities listed in the report as being in immediate financial peril.
It is certain that the vision outlined in the first paragraph cannot be achieved by inaction: urgent, difficult but strategically important decisions need to be taken now.
That is the role of responsible leaders: aiming to safeguard the future as well as taking care of the present.
It is my fervent hope that those of us that genuinely care about the University of Edinburgh will work together to ensure its future.
Principal and Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Peter Mathieson
28 October 2026
Featured image: Moments via Getty Images
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