It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Conor Murphy’s plan for 10,000 student places in Derry is more an exercise in political populism than a programme for academic advancement.
That is not to suggest that the north does not need an expansion of higher education. It does - and Derry should play a significant role in that expansion.
However, the minister’s plan contains no analysis of the existing education system here, no strategic direction for higher education, and no attempt to define the purpose of a university.
He wants to increase university student numbers, but at 11 years of age, 62 per cent of our children are unfairly branded as unsuited for university.
If the minister wants to increase higher education numbers, he must first abolish the injustice of academic selection, which Sinn Féin effectively supports. (They allowed the DUP a veto over it in the St Andrews Agreement, so they could have power with Ian Paisley.)
While Mr Murphy claims his plan will advance scientific education, the newly-appointed chair of the Education Authority does not appear to believe in science.
The DUP’s Mervyn Storey apparently believes that the world is just 6,000 years old, even though science proves that people lived in his former North Antrim constituency 10,000 years ago.
Perhaps the Education Authority is in need of education and perhaps any plan for education here should start at the bottom of the education system rather than at the top.
The Royal Irish Academy has properly called for a higher education oversight group to strategically plan co-ordinated provision between our universities.
Mr Murphy has taken a different approach. He has effectively told Ulster University: “We are building you a new campus. What would you like to put in it?”
They have replied, for example, that they will include life and health sciences.
Queen’s already offers high quality medicine, life and health sciences provision. Will UU’s Derry courses complement that, or compete with it, and will that expanded provision match future human resource needs as identified by the Department of Health (if it has any)?
Perhaps the Derry plan’s most basic weakness is that it does not examine what a university is for.
By placing universities under the Department of the Economy, Stormont presumably believes that universities exist to supply trained professionals for the economy.
It is a remarkably narrow definition, but if we accept it, the plan has got that wrong too.
To expand higher education within that context, the minister might have looked at the rest of Ireland for a new model of higher education.
Instead, he copied the British system, in which 40 per cent of universities are running unsustainable deficits.
In 1963, the Dublin government had a fresh look at higher education and devised regional colleges of technology.
These have now been merged into five world-class technological universities, catering for over 100,000 students in subjects specifically designed to serve the Irish economy.
The Derry plan is based on the more limited idea that building a university will boost the economy of where it is located.
The Atlantic Technological University, for example, has campuses in Galway, Sligo, Castlebar, Mountbellew (population 774), Letterfrack (population 192), Killybegs and Letterkenny (20 miles from Derry).
Why not a similar model for the north, or even on a cross-border basis, with its headquarters in Derry?
A plan should first decide what to do and how to do it. Then it can decide where it should be done. At that point Derry becomes central to the plan.
So it all comes down to political populism, but the minister appears to have got his politics wrong too.
He plans to have 10,000 student places by 2032, as part of Northern Ireland’s higher education system. However, his party leader claims that Northern Ireland will not exist then, following a border poll no later than 2030.
If Sinn Féin argues that the Dublin government should begin planning for Irish unity, should that same argument not apply to its Stormont ministers?
The plan appears to be driven by reversing unionism’s decision to build a UU campus in Protestant Coleraine, by building one in largely Catholic Derry.
Countering something which unionism has done wrong is not a plan. It’s just a reaction.
If you want to undo unionists’ educational injustice, you do not copy their style.
You show them how to do things right, by strategically planning for higher education.
The first step in that strategy is to leave politics - and the past - behind.