  The lifetimes of 17 even-parity levels (3d5s, 3d4d, 3d6s, and 4p$^2$) in the
region 57743-77837 cm$^{-1}$ of singly ionised scandium (\ion{Sc}{ii}) were
measured by two-step time-resolved laser induced fluorescence spectroscopy.
Oscillator strengths of 57 lines from these highly excited upper levels were
derived using a hollow cathode discharge lamp and a Fourier transform
spectrometer. In addition, Hartree--Fock calculations where both the main
relativistic and core-polarisation effects were taken into account were carried
out for both low- and high-excitation levels. There is a good agreement for
most of the lines between our calculated branching fractions and the
measurements of Lawler and Dakin (1989) in the region 9000-45000 cm$^{-1}$ for
low excitation levels and with our measurements for high excitation levels in
the region 23500-63100 cm$^{-1}$. This, in turn, allowed us to combine the
calculated branching fractions with the available experimental lifetimes to
determine semi-empirical oscillator strengths for a set of 380 E1 transitions
in \ion{Sc}{ii}. These oscillator strengths include the weak lines that were
used previously to derive the solar abundance of scandium. The solar abundance
of scandium is now estimated to $\log~\epsilon_\odot = 3.04\pm0.13$ using these
semi-empirical oscillator strengths to shift the values determined by Scott et
al. (2015). The new estimated abundance value is in agreement with the
meteoritic value ($\log~\epsilon_{\text{met}}=3.05\pm0.02$) of Lodders et al.
(2009).
