Queen's University may have to cut 1,500 student places by 2025

Queen's may have to admit 1,575 fewer local undergraduate students by 2025

Queen's University of Belfast (QUB) may have to cut more than 1,500 undergraduate student places by 2025.

That is according to QUB's vice-chancellor, who said the Department for the Economy (DfE) had asked Queen's to plan for funding cuts of up to 15%.

Prof Ian Greer said that would mean QUB would have no option but to admit 1,575 fewer local undergraduates by 2025.

Department officials have recently said they had considered cutting student places to save money.

The department has also modelled increasing tuition fees by almost 60% and ending Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA), which helps 16-19 year olds from low-income backgrounds.

That is in response to potential reductions in the economy department's budget over the next three years and the loss of some European Union (EU) funding.

However, the cuts have been described as options rather than concrete proposals.

The department's annual resource budget - for day-to-day spending - is currently just over £800m.

Almost three-quarters of that budget is spent on education and skills including funding universities, student finance, further education colleges and apprenticeships.

The number of undergraduate students from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland at Queen's is currently capped by the department at about 11,600.

That is out of a total of 25,000 students in all at the university.

The Maximum Aggregate Student Number (MASN) cap for universities in Northern Ireland is set by DfE and depends on how much funding is available from the department.

Queen's received £109m from Stormont in 2020-21, though some of that grant was extra money to help the university's response to the pandemic.

That was out of total income for the university of almost £400m.

But in a speech to a Confederation of British Industry (CBI) event with political leaders, QUB's vice-chancellor Prof Ian Greer said the university was facing budget cuts that would lead to a fall in student numbers.

"Officials from the Department for the Economy have asked the university to conduct scenario planning for budget reductions of 5%, 10%, and 15% in advance of the expected 2022-25 budget," the university said, in an addendum to Prof Greer's speech.

The university said that it would admit 525 fewer undergraduates from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland by 2025 in the event of a 5% cut in funding.

But in the event of a 15% cut, Queen's would have to cut undergraduate student places by 1,575 over the next three years.

Prof Greer said that universities in Northern Ireland needed to increase the number of places available to local students instead.

Currently, there are more than 16,000 Northern Irish students in higher education elsewhere in the UK.

Previous figures from DfE have suggested that only a third of students from Northern Ireland who graduate elsewhere in the UK return home to work.