Debate contribution: Cross-border Education

Debate contribution by Ms Diana Armstrong on 2 March 2026.

MLA

Ms Diana Armstrong

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

2 March 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Cross-border Education

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5433366

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I open my contribution by making it clear that the Ulster Unionist Party believes that education is one of the most powerful tools that we have to transform lives and shape our society. We want to expand opportunities for our young people, and we recognise that cooperation between educational institutions across these islands can bring benefits. I want to make it equally clear, however, that our first responsibility is to the students of Northern Ireland. Ultimately, cross-border mobility must not come at the expense of available university places for young people here at home. That is something that I hear from parents and students alike. What are the real barriers to opportunity for Northern Ireland's young people? The maximum student number (MaSN) cap creates artificial restrictions on the number of local students who can access higher education. We believe that reform of the MaSN cap is vital to improving opportunities for our young people. The MaSN cap places limits on local university places, which puts extra pressure on the availability of spaces for young people in Northern Ireland. That restriction forces thousands of talented young people to study in Great Britain, where they face fees of over £9,000 a year. Indeed, that barrier was pointed out recently by Queens University's vice chancellor, Professor Sir Ian Greer, who said that Queen's University is limited to offering approximately 3,500 places to students from here each year, despite an average of nearly 28,000 applications. While students can and do submit multiple applications, it is clear that supply falls considerably short of demand. The brain drain from Northern Ireland to GB is well documented. For example, a report by Pivotal found that in a period when 17,425 people left Northern Ireland to study, only 3,470 came here. Clearly, the outflow of students from Northern Ireland is not matched by students coming from elsewhere. Whilst the MaSN cap is not the sole cause of that, it evidently does not help the situation when Northern Ireland students find it much easier to get places in GB. If we are serious about opportunity, we must be serious about reform. The MaSN cap needs to be removed or fundamentally reworked so that our universities can expand to meet demand. However, that leads us to the uncomfortable truth that our universities are under severe financial strain.

Staffing and resource costs are skyrocketing, and additional funding for universities is urgently needed. We must have an honest conversation about the sustainability of our higher education model. That includes consideration of tuition fee reform. That will not be popular and is not easy to say, but leadership requires realism. If we want world-class universities, we cannot ignore the financial pressures facing the sector. The heads of each university here have already called for tuition fee rises to try to plug the gap, yet our Sinn Féin Economy Minister continues to engage in claims about abolishing tuition fees without a credible plan.

On the matter of qualification alignment, we want to ensure that Northern Ireland students are not disadvantaged when applying to institutions elsewhere on the island, such as Trinity College or Dublin City University (DCU). However, the motion places significant emphasis on aligning CAO results and timelines with UCAS without addressing the fundamental issues here. Quite simply, alignment does not create a single university place here, and nor does it resolve underfunding. Indeed, without increased capacity, increasing mobility could intensify the competition for already scarce places. Our young people deserve more than warm words about mobility; they deserve those places and the investment. For those reasons, the Ulster Unionist Party will not support the motion.

603 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:00 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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