Senior Derry acadamic Deirdre Heenan
She says universities, particularly their admissions teams have been handed “an unholy mess” after yesterday’s decision.
On Monday, Education Minister Peter Weir reversed his decision over CCEA A Level results and reverted to what teachers believed the results their pupils would achieve.
“People have to realise that it’s simply not a matter of reinstating grades,”she told BBC Radio Ulster’s Talkback show.
“Because that doesn’t address the issue of the places that have been withdrawn, the places offered to someone else, and what then are the legal and indeed the moral obligations to our students.”
Prof Heenan says the North of Ireland is the only region which operates a cap on the number of students a university can take in.
“That has been there for cost reasons, it’s a cost-saving mechanism,” she explained.
“So when people come out this morning and say ‘well why don’t we just raise the cap or lift the cap’, it’s a much more complex issue than that.”
Queen’s University Professor of Education Tony Gallagher says there needs to be a wider look at how the education system as a whole is working at present, “rather than looking at each individual bit of it”.
He said this should include schools and further education colleges, as well as universities.
Pupils back to school full time from the new term
Prof Gallagher says the debate around lifting the cap on student numbers for NI universities implies “that fees go up to English levels, or there’s additional public investment from the Department for the conomy”.
“There is a question this year about how we deal with this particular situation and whether there needs to be an investment at this point to get through this particular crisis.
“There’s a bigger issue about into the future.”
