EDUCATION has reassured local students that they will not be affected by UK cuts in higher education funding.
Minister Carol Steere moved to calm their fears yesterday after universities warned that competition for places would increase dramatically.
She said her department was not expecting Guernsey students to be affected by any cut in the number of places.
‘We are attractive to the universities in the UK from a funding point of view because they get more money out of us,’ she said.
‘The minimum a UK university will get from us is £6,000 per year and it can go up to £23,000 a year if it’s a medicine course, dentistry or something like that.
‘We are also attractive because there is no language barrier and the culture is the same, so when they look at international students we have that going for us as well.’
Deputy Steere (pictured) said Education had been advised that cuts would not have any impact until about 2012 and universities would by-and-large see a reduction only in funding for capital projects.
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Article posted on 2nd February, 2010 - 1.00pm
5 Article Comments
The NUS seems to disagree with Deputy Steere. They say that 6,000 places for the 2010 intake will be cut, with similar ongoing cuts up to 2012. They also say that more and more people will be applying for places. In 2010, over a million people will be looking for one of the 750,000 places.
This, along with the simple fact that admissions officers really do not have a clue that International students have to pay so much more than UK students (my department’s admissions officer had no idea I was worth £7k more a year in fees than the UK students, and didn’t care!!), can only mean that it will be increasingly difficult for CI students to get places.
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SB – your admissions officer may not know that you pay so much more but the people in charge of the money definitely are.
Guernsey students have nothing to worry about apart from making sure they work hard of their a levels.
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J – granted. But the accountants aren’t the ones giving out the places!! My point was, each student is offered a place on merit, not finance.
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“my department’s admissions officer had no idea I was worth £7k more a year in fees than the UK students, and didn’t care!!”
Perhaps, but that could all change now there have been such significant cuts.
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I don’t know how widely known to admissions officers the benefit of admitting a Channel Islands student is but I do know that the head of department in a prestigious English university was very much aware of it. I don’t know how knowledgeable he was in comparison to other university alumni when he told me last year that CI undergrads were regarded as very desirable because they brought in higher fees.
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