Stormont leaders pledge to work with universities and colleges on funding

Stormont’s leaders have pledged to work with Northern Ireland’s universities and colleges to address their concerns about underfunding of the higher-education sector.

First Minister Michelle O’Neill and deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly both acknowledged the financial pressures the institutions are currently under.

But they also highlighted the need to ensure that students were not discouraged from pursuing third level education because of the cost.

Last week, university chiefs in Northern Ireland jointly called on political leaders to back a significant increase in tuition fees, warning that failure to tackle a funding crisis in the sector would force them to cut places for local students.

The heads of Queen’s University, Ulster University and the Open University in Ireland co-signed a letter to the five largest parties at Stormont to say the current funding arrangements are “not sustainable”.

The university leaders acknowledged that any increase in tuition fees agreed by Stormont should not be seen in “isolation”, and they also expressed support for a corresponding rise in the maintenance grant available to students from low-income households.

The letter was endorsed by the principals of Northern Ireland’s two dedicated teacher training colleges, Stranmillis and St Mary’s.

Annual tuition fees for students from the island of Ireland studying in Northern Ireland are currently capped at £4,750.

Ms O’Neill and Ms Little-Pengelly were asked about a potential increase as they attended a sod-cutting event at the new Strule Shared Education Campus in Omagh on Wednesday.

“We all understand that even our universities are under a difficult financial climate, not least because of Tory austerity and the implications we’ve had of under-investment over many, many years,” said Sinn Fein First Minister Ms O’Neill.

“But we want to work with the universities. We want to try and find solutions.

“The other thing I would say is that student fees must be affordable. We must make it easy for students to come forward and actually access third level education.

“That means ensuring that they receive the right support, particularly for those students that need that additional support in terms of maintenance support.

“So we’re committed to working with the universities, but my bottom line is that student fees need to be affordable.”

Her DUP counterpart, Ms Little-Pengelly, said the success of Northern Ireland’s economy depended on its young people acquiring good skills and education.

“That contributes to increase in productivity, that increases those high-value jobs within our economy and, in order to do that, we need our higher and further education colleges and universities to be able to provide those places,” she said.

“So, of course, they need to be financially supported. But alongside that is the balance in all of this, because we don’t want to put young people off going to university.

“I was somebody, when I went to university, I didn’t have that external financial support, so I relied on my student loan for both the grant and to be able to get through that while working part-time.

“So we acknowledge that it can be very difficult for young people. We don’t want to put young people off from going to university.

“It’s important also to remember the apprenticeship route, which is incredibly valuable to the industries that we’ve seen here today (at the Strule construction site) as well. That is a route for our young people.

“So it has to be a balanced approach right across.”

She added: “I have no doubt that ministers will be looking at that and working with the universities to find a way that we can support them to be able to do what they need to do to provide the skills for our economy.”

Students from the rest of the UK who study in Northern Ireland pay up to £9,250. That is the same amount paid by Northern Ireland students studying in universities and colleges in England, Scotland and Wales.

The £9,250 cap is increasing to £9,535 at the start of the next academic year in the autumn.

The Northern Ireland university chiefs are not pressing for major structural changes to the current funding model, rather an increase to the fee cap for island of Ireland students to reflect the inflationary pressures of recent years.

Their letter last week expressed frustration that tuition fee increases in Northern Ireland since 2011 have “consistently fallen below inflation” while costs have “risen dramatically”.

Citing an example, the higher education leaders said if 2021 was taken as a new baseline point to apply retrospective inflationary uplifts, the corrected fee cap would be £5,831.