As those of you in Britain, especially Scotland, may be aware, the
management team at the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) yesterday
revealed that their response to the college's current financial
crisis will be to close, sell-off and scale-down all assets, staff and
holdings at the Auchincruive estate, near Ayr on the west coast of
Scotland, and the Craibston estate outside Aberdeen in the north-east.
They plan to move their entire educational program to Edinburgh
(currently by far the smallest and most underused campus), leaving
only skeleton staff for the advisory service at both Auchincruive and
Craibston.

In a nutshell, their reasoning for this is that this is the best of
ten different options recently delivered by independant management
consultants. NOT the cheapest, although this is a prime factor in
their reckoning, but the option that apeals to them most. It should be
noted that the current management team are predominantly from the
Lothian area, and have consistantly tried to shut down Auchincruive
over the last few years. The Auchincruive and Aberdeen campuses have
the highest proportion of local students, while Auchincruive alone
accounts for over half of the total student population of SAC.

One of the reasons for the Edinburgh-only option BEING cheaper is
because there are no refurbishment costs to existing student
accomodation - why? Because THERE IS NONE! Auchincruive and Craibston
have more than adequate student accomodation, and the projected refurb
costs of these buildings artificially inflates the total costs. Add to
this the BRAND NEW, yet empty buildings that SAC management thought
right to have built at the Aberdeen site, at a cost of over 5 million
pounds - they reckon that over half of the area of these buildings
will need refurbishment already, less than 2 years after completion -
yet more cost inflation. Whereas Edinburgh, currently the most
expensive place to live in Scotland, has no accomodation what-so-ever,
yet no projected costs have been allocated for building them?! Does
this make sense?

The action group for Auchincruive would greatly appreciate your
comments and opinions on this - it is important that we act fast, and
decisively!

More details, including the entire consultants report, available at:
http://www.sac.ac.uk/info/External/A...arch/03N11.asp

The figures for this report, it must be said, where provided by the
management team, and there are serious doubts as to their accuracy.

Watch this space for further details...