26th March 1998

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Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Chancellor of the University of Ulster, has called for government to match the University's performance over the past ten years by accepting the Northern Ireland recommendations of the national Dearing Report into the future of further and higher education.

Opening the University's Court on Wednesday she said higher education had more than matched its commitment to raise part of its own funding.

"Over the past ten years, the University of Ulster has increased the amount of income it has raised for research by 300% and for academic fees by 500%. Side-by-side with this, the course population had risen from some 12,000 students to over 20,000 students. A massive increase in productivity."

Rabbi Neuberger also declared her hope that "government will take to its heart the uncompromising fact that what the University promised, it actually delivered."

She also voiced her deep concern about the continuing exodus of students from Northern Ireland, many of them leaving involuntarily, to study outside the province at universities in Britain.

"In Northern Ireland, 40% of our qualified young people leave to study elsewhere and 85% do not come back. That represents an out-flowing of the life blood of our talent and skill which is lost to economic regeneration and the process of social reconciliation in which their education and experiences has a part to play".

Rabbi Neuberger went on to comment on the new £1,000 annual fee for undergraduate study, warning of the dangers of any "misguided perception that this was a panacea for the endemic ills of higher education funding". She said it was no substitute for proper financing of the growth of higher education which was unparalleled in its value for money to the public purse.

The Chancellor noted that government had accepted the principles of the Dearing Report and hoped that the ongoing consultative process would take these facts to its heart.

She was speaking in advance of a major national conference on Dearing which the University has organized for 3 April at its Jordanstown campus.

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