University sends out course offers in error

Published on 20/08/2012 00:33

A STORMONT minister has said he will look sympathetically on a university facing a possible financial penalty for exceeding student numbers after an email glitch saw hundreds of course offers sent in error.

But Employment and Learning Minister Dr Stephen Farry said he was not taking the situation created by the University of Ulster lightly.

UU’s school of engineering mistakenly responded to 370 applications with congratulatory offers when there were only 194 places in the school. The university has decided to allow the majority of those who received the email to accept a place.

Some students had applied to two courses within the school, so e-mails were sent to almost 300 people.

Yesterday, the university said it had reviewed the cases of students who were e-mailed an offer despite not attaining the marks required and had decided to honour the offers. It said a further 20 students were still waiting for some exam results, and their cases will be looked at as soon as possible. Not all students affected will necessarily accept the offer.

The university said it will have to provide more teaching support and may face a financial penalty for exceeding the MaSN (Maximum allocation of Student Numbers) cap.

Dr Farry said yesterday: “I wish to thank the University of Ulster staff for their hard work over the weekend in clarifying the situation for the students affected by this issue.

“I am mindful of the particular importance of engineering and computing to the future skill needs of our economy. It remains to be seen how many students will take up these offers. But it is now likely that the university will breach their MaSN cap.

“This is a means of financial control and universities are 
expected to remain within these limits so we cannot take this 
development lightly.”