NORTH-SOUTH:AS THOUSANDS of students North and South plan the start of their third-level education, employers' bodies expressed concern that few of them are prepared to cross the Border to study.
The Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation (Ibec) and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) yesterday urged the Government and the Northern Executive to smooth the opportunities for students from the Republic to take up courses in Northern Ireland and vice versa.
A study by the joint business council of Ibec and the CBI found students from Northern Ireland represented only 1 per cent of the Republic’s undergraduate population, while the corresponding figure for southern students in Northern Ireland was just 4.4 per cent.
The joint business council report identified a number of obstacles to such mobility, including lack of information about universities and institutes of technology in the other jurisdiction, questions over equivalence between A level and Leaving Certificate grades and unfamiliarity with the respective application processes to get into college in the two jurisdictions.
The joint business council urged that such mobility and educational “cross-fertilisation” should be priorities for an all-island economy.