'Don't Increase Our Fees!'

Thanks to student pressure and serious lobbying from the Students’ Union working alongside the national students’ union NUS- USI - we’ve successfully stopped a proposed tuition fee rise of £1,000 more per year.

In May 2025 the VC of Queen’s University, Ulster University and The Open University wrote to political party leaders across the Northern Ireland. In the letter they called for a rise in undergraduate fees to £5,831 per year. They argued that the current funding model for HE is ‘unstainable’ and that this can be fixed by charging students more.

UUSU lobbied that putting the burden of a broken university system on students was not the answer. The result has been that Northern Ireland's economy minister has said she will not be increasing university tuition fees above the usual level of inflation.

Caoimhe Archibald said while she recognised the challenges facing universities, she did not wish to "push that additional pressure on to students".