It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Ulster University is the author of its own misfortune, though that will be no comfort to the 450 people whose careers are about to be cut short by the management’s decision to chop the workforce.

The university’s obsession with growth, driven by an inferiority complex caused by sibling rivalry with Queen’s, has left it with massive debts and a hole in its income through the collapse in international student numbers.

Ulster, the love child of a sectarian government, has a habit of over-stretching itself.

I was there in the late 1970s when it was trying to establish itself in a bog on the outskirts of Coleraine. Even then it was neglecting its Magee campus in Derry.

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In the 1980s, on a civil service whim, it was forced into an arranged marriage with the Ulster Polytechnic more than 50 miles away.

In those pre-internet days, communications were clunky and the two institutions retained their own way of doing things. Inefficiency was built in from the start.

Then there was the folly of Springvale in the 1990s, when there was an attempt to piggyback on the peace process; followed by the inevitable shift to Belfast – ‘Oops, we’ve built a campus! Can someone pick up the bill?’

The shiny new Belfast iteration of UU is a monument to ego (and, having worked in higher education for some 25 years, I can tell you there is no ego bigger than an academic one).

If you’re looking for the true cause of Ulster’s economic woes, just take a stroll to Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter or take a virtual tour on the university’s website.

Ulster’s management has some justification in pointing to the government’s harsh visa requirements. But ‘some’ is the operative word here.

Successive British governments have been creating a hostile environment for migrants – including international students – since the arrival of the Conservatives in government in 2010.

Any risk assessment worth its salt would have included short, medium and long-term threats from fluctuating international student income.

And nobody should have bet the family silver on that pot being a sustainable and reliable source of primary funding.

There are just too many variables in a world which is increasingly unstable.

The best organisations base their planning on things they can control, not things that depend on the whim of an incompetent home government or the vagaries of international politics.

International student income has never been reliable, and it never will be. Just look at the world we are living in.

We are currently witnessing a single-handed attempt to destroy the global economy by the President of the United States.

Over the past two decades, the free flow of capital and human beings – including those seeking an education – has been interrupted time and time again by a series of micro-aggressions, whether they be from strategic planners in Communist China, right-wing governments in Europe, or insurgents and dictators in Africa.

There is another dimension to this. Should a first-world higher education institution really be relying on income from students in developing countries to subside its ambitions? That is a question which is relevant not just for Ulster.

Rightly, the unions have questioned the university’s strategic vision, and asked how Ulster could feasibly function with such a significant loss of staff. They deserve answers.

The situation also exposes the folly of putting the future of higher education in Derry in Ulster’s hands – a unionist decision initially, and now perpetuated by Sinn Féin ministers. Derry deserves better.

Education is important for its own sake but, in addition, the future of the north’s higher education system is critical to its economic, cultural and social development.

As UU has done, the Executive will be tempted to blame Westminster (always the default position) and leave the university to sort out its own mess at the expense of the livelihoods of its staff.

MLAs will provide shoulders for the unions to cry on and crocodile tears will flow.

But this difficulty provides an opportunity for a root-and-branch review of higher education in the north – with Queen’s, Magee, UU and the colleges all in the mix – followed by the creation of a new system which meets the needs of students and the wider community.

This new system should include meaningful partnerships which transcend the border, leveraging world-class learning, teaching and research across the island for the benefit of all its citizens.

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