Commenting on the visit he said: "Today I was delighted to visit the Ulster University campus in Derry/Londonderry to meet with the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Paul Bartholomew and his team. I was pleased to see the recent developments in the campus and hear about their future plans to address the regional imbalance in student numbers. 

"I am fully supportive of Ulster University’s strategy to enhance student capacity in both the Derry/Londonderry and Coleraine campuses, both universities agree that it is vital that Northern Ireland achieves a sustainable funding model for Higher Education. 

"This will allow the region to provide more places for students from Northern Ireland so that anyone seeking access to Higher Education here can to avail of a local place if they so wish. The majority of any new additional places secured following the agreement of a new funding model should go to the Northwest and Coleraine, with Queen’s focusing on increasing widening participation places and also increasing places in our courses that currently over capacity due to high demand.  

"All of these measures will help reduce educational migration, help the skills shortages for our economy and help meet the needs of young people in Northern Ireland whose aspirations cannot be met locally due to current lack of provision, a situation that creates inequality of access to university across the UK. 

"I look forward to enhancing the current partnership with our colleagues in Ulster University and we work alongside business, further education and civic society to secure a sustainable funding model for the sector which will enhance the socioeconomic position of Northern Ireland."

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