Northern Ireland Conservatives’ spokesperson, Annika Nestius-Brown, has welcomed the fact that the Minister for Employment and Learning has produced a Higher Education strategy, but she said that, “unfortunately it is too vague, the timescales it sets are too modest and its passages on student mobility are completely contradictory.”
“There are things to be commended in DEL’s Graduating to Success strategy”, Annika noted. “Among the jargon and the padding are some good ideas. For instance, guaranteeing every student in higher education a work placement is a worthy aspiration, albeit that the minister thinks he can only deliver that aim by 2020. Similarly, the notion that universities could open bases at certain Further Education Colleges has the potential to make life easier for distance and part-time students.”
“Unfortunately, where the ideas are good, the timescales are too generous. We need to address the needs of industry quicker, if we are to grow the economy. Why, for instance, can’t we look at funding incentives to take up STEM subjects immediately? There are also long tracts of this document which contain only worthy words and there are some blatant contradictions.”
“One of Stephen Farry’s key strategies to deliver employable graduates is a Higher Education Achievement Report, which universities will be expected to compile with every student. The truth is that these sound very similar to the various types of ‘learning portfolio’ which are already a component of an increasing number of courses.”
“It’s also thoroughly ironic that the report prioritises attracting more foreign students and removing ‘obstacles to student mobility’ across the Irish border, when, at the same time, the minister has introduced blatant discrimination against youngsters from the rest of the UK who want to study in Northern Ireland. Student mobility is certainly of critical importance to higher education here, but, by charging English, Scottish and Welsh students higher fees, nobody has done more to reduce that mobility than Stephen Farry and this Executive.”