The chair of Stormont’s economy committee, Democratic Unionist Party assembly member Phillip Brett, said a further cut in university funding could mean that the universities would not receive money for three months for students they have already enrolled.
“The universities have taken students on in the anticipation that they will receive funding from the department,” he said.
“We’re now six months into the financial year and they still haven’t received a formal letter of offer from the department.
“And despite students enrolling in September, one of the contingencies from the department is now that come January, February, March you might say ‘actually we’re not going to pay you for these three months of the students that you’ve taken on’?”
“It’s a possibility,” Snowden told the committee.
He also said the universities could only get confirmation of how much funding they would get when the executive agreed a budget.
“At this point we still don’t know how much money we have to spend,” he said.