There are 40,000 third-level students in northwest Ireland, with 7,000 graduates annually ready for employment.
Ulster University has a campus at Magee in Derry/Londonderry. This is a university offering third-level education only. In a reply to a Freedom of Information request from the Derry News, the university planning office confirmed that in the academic year 2018/19, there were 4,313 students studying at the Magee campus: 3,429 were full-time and 884 were part-time. If most degrees take three years to achieve, and following the same pattern observed at Letterkenny Institute of Technology, we estimate that there would be 1,500 graduates from the Magee campus each year. North West Regional College’s data compliance officer provided us with a current estimate of 1,057 students studying in third level/higher education. Of these, 539 are full-time and 518 are part-time. It noted that this may not represent the final figure as further enrolments may be received and processed throughout the year. In 2017-18, third-level students comprised 10% of NWRC’s overall student enrolments. NWRC had 586 students graduate from higher education in 2018-19. Letterkenny Institute of Technology’s admissions office confirmed that they have just over 4,000 students in total, and that all of these students are completing higher education qualifications, Levels 6-10. They also advised that they had 1,200 graduates in 2018.