Higher Education Funding

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

As always, Ms Vaz, it is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship. I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing the debate, setting the scene so well and enabling us to make a contribution on this incredibly important subject. It is a matter of grave concern for the future of our people, our youth and our economic prosperity in Northern Ireland. The Minister has no responsibility for Northern Ireland, but I always like to bring a Northern Ireland perspective to debates, because what is happening on the mainland is happening to us as well. We are debating the broader systematic challenges facing higher education funding across the United Kingdom, yet, as is so often the case, the view from Northern Ireland reveals a distinct and far more perilous landscape. It is good to see the Minister in her place; I look forward to asking her at least one question, which I hope she will be able to answer.

While universities in England and Wales adjust to tuition fee caps rising to £10,000, our local institutions remain strictly bound by the Department for the Economy. We deliberately keep undergraduate tuition fees lower, at £4,750, to ensure accessibility for our working-class communities. It is important to me as an MP and to our Assembly that we look after them and give opportunity for all. The Labour party wants opportunity for all, I have no doubt, and I wholeheartedly support the motivation of the hon. Member for Sheffield Central.

We need look no further than the devastating crisis that is currently unfolding at Ulster University, where some 735 members of staff—nearly 24% of the entire workforce—have applied for redundancy. The university is forcing through a planned reduction of jobs to plug a catastrophic £25 million deficit. Dedicated lecturers, researchers and support staff across Belfast, Coleraine and Magee are watching their livelihoods vanish. It is gutting our regional skills base, cutting away the fabric of Northern Ireland’s future and threatening the long-promised expansion of the Magee campus in Londonderry.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue of the Magee and Coleraine campuses needs to be addressed, particularly the maximum aggregate student number cap, which restricts the numbers that universities in Northern Ireland can take? We have to review that urgently.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank my hon. Friend and colleague for bringing that issue forward and for backing up practically what he sees on the ground, as I do, from the Northern Ireland perspective. Any decision against the Magee campus in Londonderry means telling the local businesses crying out to fix the skills deficit that the talent will simply not be there. That worries me greatly.

The Provost of Ulster University warned just days ago that those consequences are not abstract, nor are they years away. They are happening at this very minute, as we sit here, and they are affecting student places and long-term investment. Once the intellectual capacity is lost to redundancy, it is incredibly difficult ever to build it back up. Our institutions create value far beyond their campus walls. These are difficult times, and when the Minister responds it is important that we hear of a strategy. Please will she discuss policy changes and strategy with the relevant Northern Ireland Assembly Minister to ensure that we can move forward towards a positive future, even though it looks incredibly black at the moment?

Unlike England, which boasts well over 100 higher education institutions, Northern Ireland has only two for our population: Queen’s University and Ulster University. In a region with only two distinct academic employers, the impending job losses at Ulster University represent not a standard corporate restructuring, but a catastrophic hollowing out of nearly half of Northern Ireland’s university network. Academics and researchers have practically nowhere else to turn locally. These cuts create an inevitable brain drain, forcing elite talent to flee across the water to Great Britain, while triggering course closures that push local students to follow them.

I will conclude, because I am conscious that others want to speak. When one of only two pillars of a higher education framework is forced to cut a quarter of its applicants through redundancy, the structural integrity of the entire region’s skilled economy faces immediate collapse. That is the serious issue we face in Northern Ireland, and that is why I seek the Minister’s help.

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[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Ind)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing this debate.

As remarkable as it is to imagine, I also began university under Margaret Thatcher.

[Jim Shannon]

You are really looking well.

[Perran Moon]

Thanks, Jim.

The higher education funding settlement is currently failing both universities and young people in Cornwall. Institutions such as Falmouth University, based largely in my Camborne, Redruth and Hayle constituency, are central to our local economy and our skills base, yet they are increasingly being asked to educate students at a loss. Delivering a full-time degree costs more than £12,000 a year, so even when the maximum tuition fee rises past £10,000 next year, it will still fall well short.

No sector can remain sustainable if growth depends on losses, and the funding gap is particularly acute for regional and specialist institutions. Universities, therefore, are forced to compete for short-term grants and rely on international student income to balance the books. But when that income falls, courses and jobs are at risk. We have seen that play out over the summer at the University of Exeter’s Tremough campus, also in my constituency, with voluntary redundancies and the closure of its geography course.

The system is not working for students either, especially those from lower-income backgrounds. In my constituency, less than 23% of 18-year-olds went to university in 2025, compared with 51% in London. That is not because young people in Cornwall lack talent or ambition; it is because in one of the poorest regions of northern Europe, the costs of pursuing a degree with the associated debt are too great to even consider. The barriers to higher education are simply too high. Even students who remain in Cornwall but rightly want to live on campus find that the rent for a single room consumes almost their entire maintenance loan before they have spent a penny on food, travel or other essentials.

The loan system does not make things any better. Those from wealthier families may avoid taking out a loan altogether, while low-income students have no such option. A low-income student on a three-year course could be left with a £67,000 debt the moment they graduate. The interest on the debt often accumulates faster than repayments, leaving poorer graduates paying a higher effective rate for their entire careers.

Higher education should expand opportunity and drive growth in places such as Cornwall. Instead, we have a system that asks universities to do more with less while operating a student loan system that, for all intents and purposes, functions as a regressive graduate tax. We cannot build a fairer, more productive country on that foundation. I ask the Minister: what steps are the Government taking to make higher education funding fairer for students and more sustainable for universities?

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[Georgia Gould]

We want two thirds of young people to participate in higher-level learning, whether that is going to university, pursuing an apprenticeship or a technical route. We see all of those as deeply connected.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister for her helpful response. She has outlined a very clear strategy to try to address the issues that we have all raised. I ask her a specific question: would she consider sharing the strategy with the relevant Minister back home?