How can Scotland lose so much capacity with so little debate?

It is becoming hard not to feel that Scotland's universities are being transformed in fundamental ways at a pace which does not permit debate and scrutiny, and with scant regard to democratic considerations or to the long-term strategic impact it will have.

It seems that a group of people who have been running universities for years has led them into crisis and is reshaping these institutions into a completely new shape in their own interests, not in Scotland's. The list of course closures just announced at Edinburgh University is a case in point.

There are so many courses being cut that it is not possible to consider the collective impact – Economic Statistics is to go, but so is Persian and English Literature and Outdoor and Environmental Education, and so is Accounting and Business.

To get a sense of how these cuts will have long-term impacts, let's look at one field – the study of Scotland. This is a critical time in Scotland's history, and no one is going to argue that Scots get a lot of exposure to the study of Scotland in the school curriculum. Should a nation considering potentially enormous changes in its future not study itself?

It seems not. The list of subjects being slashed includes: Scottish Literature, Celtic, Religious Studies and Scottish Literature, History of Art and Scottish Literature, Law and Celtic, Celtic and Scottish Literature, Celtic and Archaeology, Celtic and English Language, Scottish Ethnology, Scottish Ethnology and Scandinavian Studies, Scottish Ethnology and English Language, Scottish Literature and Classics, Scottish Literature and Scottish History, Scottish Literature and History and Philosophy and Scottish Literature.

This is an alarming list of ways to study our nation that are being cut off in this move. The teaching and research capacity will be gone. Scotland will effectively permanently lose this capacity. We are already an under-studied nation, and this is a permanent diminution of our ability to study ourselves. The students who cannot learn now cannot teach later. This is a generational loss.

But it is happening with no debate. Indeed, it is barely happening according to the constitution of the University, whose leadership has refused to recognise its own rules about how academics can shape what is happening in the university (a story which ought to have led to a lot more outrage than it did). There is little debate; this is mostly happening by diktat, directed by private sector consultancies under a rigid veil of secrecy.

As well as the direct and devastating impact on staff losing their jobs, there is also a more intangible asset being lost here. A nation's intellectual capacity is a key national asset built up and built upon over centuries, made up of lots of parts, some formal, some informal. It is a lot easier to lose that capacity than to regain it.

And when it is lost, it is lost to all of us and potentially for generations to come. So, on what basis is this decision being made? It is being driven by a private sector 'international management consultancy' called Nous, which specialises in telling universities what courses and services to slash. It has a highly controversial reputation in global higher education circles.

This is presumably why Edinburgh University’s managers refused to divulge any information about it until it was forced to via a Freedom of Information request. Again, should a small, largely self-selected leadership team be allowed to create a giant financial deficit and then be left free to slash the university to close it, done in private with the help of corporate 'restructuring' and excluding pretty well everyone else?

That is the logic of the modern Scottish public sector governance model. The same people control the enforcement of the constitution of the organisation, its entire management and oversight, its finances, the flow of information from and about the university, and its relationship with the government. All the checks and balances to this power that used to be in place have been removed.

And yet still the question remains: is it public policy to destroy Scotland's capacity to study its own nation, or is it being removed from the nation undemocratically in what isn't unlike an administrative coup? And why is the nation as a whole accepting the idea that we have no part to play in this debate?

Universities are generational institutions. Their leadership should have seen their job as to protect them for the next generation. Which means that university leadership has failed – but is being allowed to inflict its failures on everyone but itself. It is Scotland that is being damaged here, yet we get no say.