College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise: Tuition Fees
3:15 pm
Danny Kinahan (UUP)
7. asked the Minister for Employment and Learning what discussions he has had with the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development in relation to her decision to increase tuition fees for students from Great Britain wishing to study at the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise. (AQO 1770/11-15)
Stephen Farry (Alliance)
: I understand that the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development has not yet taken a final decision on this issue. Minister O’Neill and I met in November 2011 to discuss the future arrangements for higher education fees and funding. At that meeting, she indicated her intention to consult on a proposal to increase fees at the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise for new students from other parts of the United Kingdom who commence higher education courses on or after 1 September 2012. The public consultation was launched on 15 February 2012 and will close on 10 May 2012. The Minister and I have had no further discussions on this matter.
Danny Kinahan (UUP)
: I thank the Minister for his answer. However, does he accept that it is fundamentally unfair and unjustifiable that fellow residents in the United Kingdom will face fees of up to £9,000 while students from the Republic will pay as little as just over £1,000?
Stephen Farry (Alliance)
: I thank the Member for his question in so far as it gives me an opportunity to make this point: I cannot comment on the specifics and the rationale for what the Minister of Agriculture may do. That is her decision.
I cannot comment on the specifics of or the rationale for what the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development may do. That is her decision. I can comment on what I have done as Minister for Employment and Learning. Once we took the decision to freeze the fees for local students in local institutions, we had an inescapable obligation to address and manage the distortions that would arise from different fees regimes in different parts of the UK. To do otherwise would have risked a situation in which we had an influx of applications from elsewhere, resulting in our local students being either displaced and having to pay higher fees elsewhere in the UK, and perhaps being lost to the Northern Ireland economy, or deterred totally from going to university.
I think that, if we had not acted in the way we did, we would have been looking at a very serious situation today, with Members’ postbags being flooded with letters from concerned parents protesting at the situation. Through the decisions we have taken, we have avoided that.
I understand, or I thought I did, that the Ulster Unionists agreed with the freezing of fees in Northern Ireland, but they seem strangely unwilling to accept the logical consequences of that decision. Unless they are now going to suggest otherwise, they favour higher fees here so that there is the same level of fees throughout the UK, which is very much at odds with the views of the electorate in this part of the UK.
: The Minister well knows that the SDLP was very much in favour of freezing tuition fees and, if possible, abolishing them at some stage in the future.
Minister, given that the agrifood industry is the industry that it is hoped will lift the economy out of recession, have you had any discussions with the Agriculture Minister about increasing the number of places at CAFRE or the universities to meet the employment opportunities that will hopefully arise in a niche market?
Stephen Farry (Alliance)
: As regards support for the agrifood sector, we have recognised that it is one of the priority skill areas for the future evolution of the Northern Ireland economy. We have a future skills action group that is working in that area, so we recognise the absolute importance of all of that.
I also remind Mrs Kelly that, insofar as the SDLP supported the freezing of fees in Northern Ireland, it proposed to do that by taking the money out of the universities. So, we would have had the bizarre situation where we were subsidising low fees but, at the same time, funding a poorer form of education, which would have been utterly counterproductive.