Ulster University to cut student numbers by 1,200

Ulster University (UU) is to cut student numbers by 1,200 and staff by 210 as the Stormont funding crisis bites in higher education.

Announcing the consequences of its “dire” financial position, the university accused the Stormont Executive of “robbing” young people of opportunities to enter third-level studies.

Northern Ireland’s other university, Queen’s in Belfast, has already announced a cut of 290 in its student intake for September, along with the loss of 236 jobs, in response to an £8 million cut in its subsidy.

The decline in third-level places in the North may put further pressure on universities in the Republic, which have agreed a new CAO admissions scheme for 2016 aimed at boosting the Northern Ireland student intake.

UU acting vice-chancellor Alastair Adair outlined the proposed cuts to staff in the university’s four campuses yesterday.

The university plans to shed the 210 jobs from its 2,800 workforce this year, which it says it hopes to achieve through voluntary redundancies. The 1,200 student places will be shed over three years, starting with the loss of 250 places this September. These cuts will reduce the population of full-time students at UU to 11,900 by September 2017.

A number of courses are also due to be dropped, as well as programmes designed to engage with disadvantaged communities, Mr Adair said.

“This is not a message I would want to convey but it is a message that the university has to face,” he said.

“It’s a direct result of the budget cuts and there has to be flowing from this a really mature debate among Northern Ireland politicians regarding the funding of higher education in the province because the implications of this are dire.”

The institution – formerly known as University of Ulster – has seen its its annual recurrent budget cut from £89 million in the 2010-2011 academic year to a projected £70.7 million for this coming year.

The 2015-2016 allocation, which is £5 million down on the spend in 2014-2015, is a best-case scenario, as there is currently a £600 million shortfall in the overall Stormont budget.

Teaching spend

Mr Adair highlighted that UU’s current teaching spend per student was about £1,700 less than the average for English universities.

The reduction in college places, combined with the recently agreed CAO reforms, are expected to lead to a further increase in the number of Northern Ireland students coming south to study.

There was a 27 per cent jump in the number of students from Northern Ireland applying to colleges in the Republic in last year’s CAO, albeit from a low base. The 1,383 Northern applicants for 2015 represented less than 2 per cent of CAO applicants.

The Republic is attractive on cost grounds, given tuition fees in England can be as high as £9,000 compared with a Northern Ireland cap of £3,805. Under the CAO reforms, taking effect from September 2016, students from Northern Ireland will be able to gain access to colleges in the Republic with three A-levels rather than four.