Today we seem content to just watch as the pillars of society built by our ancestors are torn down and destroyed one by one.

The NHS has been crippled, our schools are exhausted, our transport system smashed. The Army is enfeebled, the police overwhelmed. The notion of affordable housing is dead. The notion of a job for life is dead. The notion of a safety net when you don’t have a job for life is dead. The notion of community is dead. Our media is splintered and dumbed down. Politics is an absurd, horrible joke. Previous generations looked around and asked "what can we build to make life better?". We ask "what can we save to keep life tolerable?".

If this is a counsel of despair, it’s because finding hope is so difficult.

The last engine of hope is about to give out: Scotland’s universities. Universities create the minds we need to progress. What happens when universities stop working?

The great symbol of the collapse of our university system is Edinburgh. Ninety degree courses are going. An astonishing figure.

All of the courses – including single honours Scottish literature – are part of the college of arts, humanities and social sciences. Think of this: one of the great Scottish universities is sticking a knife through the heart of the study of Scottish literature. Also being sacrificed are courses including the History of Art and Scottish literature, Celtic, Scottish Ethnology, and Scottish literature and Scottish history. These are studies which allow Scotland to understand itself. A nation which doesn’t understand itself isn’t a nation.

Read more by Neil Mackay

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