As an addendum to the local decision to peg tuition fees at the current level. Here’s a good video piece from the Daily Telegraph on the UK Government’s still rather nebulous proposal to rank Universities… The White Paper they are discussing was published earlier in the summer…
It also contains an incentive measure to encourage universities to drop their fees from £9k to less than £7,500; ie they can bid for some of 20,000 extra under graduate places.
Of course, Northern Ireland is out of this game at the moment.
But as Mark Devenport has noted, the increasingly uneven playing field within the UK may affect the choices that local students make in future in ways that are as yet uncertain and hard to predict.
Perhaps Amsterdam and Barcelona may provide an viable alternative educational route in future as the likes of Keele and Brunel have done in the past?
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty