One of the great myths of Scottish higher education is that it’s free. Outside observers can be forgiven for making this error because Nicola Sturgeon asserts it so very often. She has boasted that ‘one of this government’s proudest achievements is the restoration of free higher education’, claimed to ‘stand for universal services, such as… free education’, and argued, naturally, that independence is ‘the only way to protect the advances that Scotland has made with devolution through the social contract, which has delivered vital universal benefits such as free university education’.