It was announced last week that the Scottish Funding Council is providing Dumfries and Galloway College with pound;21.7 million to allow it to relocate to the Crichton campus in Dumfries where it will sit alongside the outposts of Glasgow and Paisley universities and Hamilton’s Bell College.

This follows the news that the funding council has also agreed to support a single joint campus in Galashiels for Borders College and Heriot-Watt University, and a new community college in Hawick, in a pound;32 million development.

This will be more integrated than the Crichton project and will allow college and university students to share facilities.

But Tony Jakimciw, principal of Dumfries and Galloway College, is keen that the Crichton initiative should also be seen as a “one-stop shop”. This would be a unique opportunity in Scotland for students “to benefit from the best of both worlds and access cutting edge facilities across several education institutions”.

The two projects should see further moves towards articulation agreements between the FE and HE sectors, and progression for students to move from college courses to degrees.

Ian Beach, assistant principal at Dumfries and Galloway College, says that the articulation agreement with Paisley University would allow students to move from National Qualifications to Higher National Qualifications to one final degree year, with the majority of the degree year being taught by college staff.