In this short extract from his new book A Scandal In Plain Sight, GARRETT HARGAN investigates how Ulster University and its friends in Stormont put the wheels in motion to deprive a new Derry generation of its own university.
IN FEBRUARY 2012 news broke that the University of Ulster had bought up a large swathe of land in Belfast’s north inner city to house a new ‘£250m’ campus.
An Outline Business Case for the redevelopment of the University’s Jordanstown Campus (approved in March 2010) had recommended relocating the majority of the activities and students from Jordanstown to a significantly expanded Belfast campus.
A similar £250m expansion plan for Magee had been proposed and considered at the same time but was shelved by UU. The university could not serve two cities.
Around 15,000 students were to be relocated from Jordanstown to the new Belfast campus. The building programme was hailed as the largest single investment in the university’s history.
Yet over that period there appears to have been no great pressure exerted by the government or the civil service on Ulster University to move any students from the County Antrim campus to Derry. This was despite Magee’s long-established need and the fact that Belfast already had a colossal percentage of the North’s students. Significantly, there had been no call for, campaign for, or demand for a new Belfast campus, as there had been in Derry.
Back when the Lockwood Report was being drawn up, there was a recommendation that, to ensure regional balance, the second university should be sited at least 40 miles outside Belfast. There were, however, no such safeguards in place when UU decided, by itself, to move into the capital in the early 2000s. There does not appear to have been external scrutiny of the plan by any independent HE oversight commission.
Detailed plans for the development were submitted to the Department of the Environment, and the Education and Learning Scrutiny Committee at Stormont was briefed on the plan.
Committee chair Basil McCrea, who previously couldn’t envisage any expansion at Magee, now seemed to have resolved his concerns about the shortfalls in the HE budget, describing the plans as “astonishing”.
He enthused: “It’s fantastic, it’s great. Breathtaking is what you’ll see when you see the plans unveiled. It’s a really good thing for north Belfast and the whole city.” (BBC NI report)
He said, in theory, the plans could be approved in six months, with work beginning by the end of the year.
If only the same urgency had been applied to investment at Magee. And like that, the ball was rolling to inject life into what has become a neglected part of Belfast City Centre.
A Scandal in Plain Sight, priced £5.00, is now available from Colmcille Press and will be in bookshops soon. The eBook can be downloaded from colmcillepress.com for £1.00.