The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland is one of seven universities which has successfully secured additional funding through the Scottish Funding Council’s (SFC) University Transformation Framework (UTF) for projects designed to drive innovation, collaboration and long-term sustainability across Scotland’s higher education sector.

The UTF funding stream has been designed to give institutions greater flexibility in developing innovative approaches to transformation, strengthen partnerships across the tertiary sector and support financial sustainability.

RCS will use the £480,000 of funding it is to receive to undertake a comprehensive review of operations and estates infrastructure including opportunities for campus redevelopment, as well as assessing RCS’s wider economic impact.

Professor Lois Fitch, RCS Deputy Principal, who led RCS’s bid for UTF funding said: “We’re delighted to receive this support from the Scottish Funding Council’s new UTF fund. Our proposal was to use these funds to consider how we might undertake some organisational development – this means reviewing the efficiency of our systems, processes and infrastructure, particularly in light of shifting student ecology, a broader portfolio of programmes and evolving demands on services such as student support services and digital development.

“This fund presents RCS, as a smaller institution, the opportunity to create extra capacity to undertake organisational development work that is normally embedded in larger universities.

“This award will also support our appraisal of our estate in the context of our future student numbers planning, prioritising student and staff experience, as well as funding our commission of an Economic Impact Study to demonstrate our strong graduate and staff impact in Glasgow and beyond.”

Read more on the announcement on the Scottish Funding Council’s website.