Ulster University to make almost 500 redundancies as provost warns education quality under threat

Ulster University, which is having to make nearly 500 redundancies, is near the limit of its ability to absorb cutbacks without threatening top-class education, the university’s provost has said.

In a direct message to Stormont, Cathy Gormley-Heenan said the Northern Ireland Executive must set long-term priorities, “not lurch from crisis to crisis”, and provide key institutions in Northern Ireland with “the certainty that we need to plan”.

If Stormont cannot sustain the institutions “that educate its workforce, drive innovation, support public services and underpin economic growth”, then difficult questions arise about delivering the changes needed across Northern Ireland.

“If higher education continues to be weakened through underinvestment and short-term decision-making, Northern Ireland loses much more than university capacity,” said Gormley-Heenan.

Speaking on Friday at a conference in the university on the need to “reboot” public services in the North, the Ulster University (UU) provost said Northern Ireland’s third-level institutions are now faced with another “significant reduction” in teaching grants.

The financial challenges facing the North’s universities are not just “a university problem” because universities create value far beyond the university campuses and the university walls. “This is what’s at stake in the choices that Northern Ireland now faces,” she said.

Because Northern Ireland deliberately keeps undergraduate tuition fees lower than they are in England, Stormont tops up university finances, but this sum has come under increasing pressure year on year.

More than 750 university staff have applied for the 450 places on the redundancy programme, though it is not yet clear how this will impact on the courses offered to students.

“The consequences of continued uncertainty are not abstract or years away. They are affecting decisions now about student places, staffing, research capacity and long-term investment,” she said, warning there are limits to what can be absorbed.

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“Once capacity is lost, it is really hard to build it back up again. The people who will ultimately pay the price are not universities. It’s the students seeking opportunities, the employers looking for talent who are saying we have a skills deficit.

“It’s the public services out there that need our skilled professionals that we are producing for the health service and others,” Gormley-Heenan told the conference run by UU and the University of Notre Dame-backed ARINS project.

Defending the university’s performance, she said UU has been named the Times Higher Educational Supplement UK and Ireland University of the Year, while nine out of ten graduates go directly into jobs or further study.

“We’re among the leading UK universities on research impact across the board. In the top 10 in many areas. Our own students have ranked us first in the UK for teaching quality. What they say is the quality of the education they get here is extraordinary.

“We’re one of the engines to make a lot of those other things happen. It’s about Northern Ireland’s ability to transform itself. Universities sit at the heart of all of that,” she went on.

[ Potential 450 job cuts at Ulster University will have ‘far-reaching, detrimental’ impactOpens in new window ]

So far, 735 staff – nearly a quarter – have applied for the 450 redundancies on offer, though it is not yet clear if management can avoid compulsory redundancies as it seeks to cut costs but maintain courses and research.

UU’s underlying deficit now stands at over £20 million (€23.8 million), up by £15 million in just a year. Income increased by about 4 per cent, but spending excluding pension adjustments rose by about 9 per cent. Equally, tuition fees have not kept pace with inflation.