Blog | Just transition and a fair future for Scotland's rural and island communities
Principal and Chief Executive Lydia Rohmer explains how opportunity must work for everyone in our communities
Ahead of the 2026 Scottish Parliament election, the debate on skills, productivity and inclusive growth is rightly intensifying. Colleges Scotland’s manifesto, Opportunity That Works, makes a compelling national case: colleges are skills engines, community anchors and a vital part of Scotland’s anti-poverty infrastructure. Investment in colleges is investment in Scotland’s future.
From the perspective of my college, UHI North, West and Hebrides, this argument is not hypothetical. It reflects the daily lived experience across one of the most geographically dispersed, sparsely populated and strategically important regions in Europe. The challenge for policymakers and political candidates is to ensure opportunity genuinely works everywhere and for everyone - including in rural, remote and island communities sitting at the frontline of Scotland’s ‘Just Transition’.
Our college spans communities from Caithness and Sutherland to Skye and the Outer Hebrides. We operate across multiple islands and remote mainland geographies. In many of these places, the college is not just a provider of education; it is the largest employer, a key public asset, and often the only locally accessible route into skills, training and good work. This means providing the widest possible range of people with local access to opportunities from national qualifications to postgraduate degrees. We offer courses for young people still at school, school leavers, adults seeking to re-enter formal learning, or seeking to upskill or re-skill, and employers looking for apprenticeships or workforce development.
This matters profoundly for Scotland’s ‘Just Transition’ and a fairer, greener future for all. Much of the infrastructure required to meet Scotland’s net zero ambitions - onshore or offshore wind, subsea engineering, marine renewables, grid reinforcement, hydro pump storage and hydrogen production - is located in, or dependent upon, rural and island regions. These areas are already producing a significant proportion of the UK’s energy, yet they also experience some of the highest levels of fuel poverty and the most fragile local economies. Skills provision rooted in these places is not just a social good, it is an economic necessity.
However, rural and island colleges like ours operate within a funding system that does not adequately recognise our structural disadvantage. Delivering education across dispersed communities carries inherent inefficiencies: small class sizes, high travel, accommodation and utility costs, weather-dependent logistics, recruitment challenges, and the need to maintain a distributed college estate so that people can learn where they actually live.
We receive additional funding because of our rurality. This only partially compensates for these higher costs. This additional payment has remained static in cash terms since it was last reviewed in 2018. Over that period, inflation has eroded its value by around 30% in real terms, significantly weakening its ability to do the job it was designed for. At the same time, colleges like ours operating in island areas must also meet the costs of Distant Islands Allowance to attract and retain staff, in line with wider public sector practice. Yet, this was excluded from national pay harmonisation, with island-based colleges left to fund this ourselves. Together, these pressures place a disproportionate cost burden on colleges serving the most fragile economies in Scotland.
Colleges Scotland is right to call for multi-year funding, parity of esteem and a stronger role for colleges in regional skills planning. In a UHI context, a “colleges first” approach must be understood as part of an integrated tertiary education system, where locally rooted colleges work seamlessly with our wider university partnership to deliver pathways from school into further education, from further education into higher education, and from education into innovation and industry. For rural and island regions, this connected model is essential for building resilient local economies.
Skills investment must not bypass local rural and island colleges in favour of provision in Scotland’s metropolitan and urban population centres. When this happens, the consequences are predictable: inward investment proceeds, but the workforce is brought in from outside the local area. Communities host the infrastructure, but do not share in its benefits. This is not a Just Transition.
The Colleges Scotland manifesto’s recognition of colleges as part of Scotland’s anti-poverty infrastructure also resonates strongly in our region. Many of our learners are adult returners, carers, parents or people in low-paid work seeking to retrain. Distance, transport costs, digital access and housing pressures compound disadvantage. Small local learning centres and hybrid delivery, both in person and online, are not luxuries in these contexts, they are what makes access possible at all.
This is a clear call to action for existing MSPs, prospective MSPs and MPs. The Highlands and islands are rapidly becoming an energy super-engine for Scotland, the UK and potentially northern Europe. Regions that underpin national energy security must receive fair and proportionate investment in the people and institutions that make that possible.
That means recognising higher delivery costs, restoring the real-terms value of rural funding, properly funding island workforce costs, and committing to multi-year settlements that provide stability. Opportunity does work. We see that every day across the Highlands and islands.
If political leaders are serious about the Just Transition, about inclusive growth, and about sustaining communities where Scotland’s energy future is being built, then rural and island colleges must be central to their plans.
More young people and families will leave in search of better prospects elsewhere if structural under investment continues. The next Scottish Parliament will decide whether Scotland’s rural and island communities are enabled to thrive or are quietly left behind. Colleges like UHI North, West and Hebrides stand ready to deliver. Political leadership must now match our ambition.