Daily Mail columnist Stephen Daisley criticises the SNP's record on higher education, arguing that Scotland's flagship free tuition policy has come at the expense of both students and access to universities. He contends that the party's celebrated "no tuition fees" pledge has masked deeper problems, including funding shortfalls, capped places for Scottish applicants, and universities becoming more reliant on income from other sources to compensate for lost fee revenue.

The piece argues that Scottish universities, squeezed by frozen or inadequate funding per domestic student, have increasingly prioritised higher-paying international and rest-of-UK students over Scots, effectively turning some students into a revenue stream to prop up institutions' finances. Daisley frames this as evidence that the SNP's flagship education policy, long presented as a point of pride, has produced unintended consequences that disadvantage the very students it was meant to help.