One of Scotland's leading academics has given warning that the country risks losing a generation of actors unless drama degrees are properly financed, or teaching practice is radically overhauled.

Anthony Cohen, principal of Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, said that inadequate funding for performance degrees at the university and at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow made them “simply unsustainable”.

The two institutions were providing intensive conservatoire training on budgets set at only 55 per cent of those at equivalent colleges in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

“We have struggled on as best we can for as long as we could,” Professor Cohen said. “Scotland is entitled to have as well-prepared theatre professionals as anywhere else in the UK - but we have to pay for it. There is no way around that.”

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