From the Aussie press.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national/red-faces-millions-lost-as-uni-closes-campus/2007/05/23/1179601495596.html
Red faces, millions lost as uni closes campus
Harriet Alexander Higher Education Reporter | May 24,
2007
HE University of NSW will abandon its Singaporean campus at the end
of next month just one semester after it opened its doors, losing
millions and precious face in the export education market.
The university decided at the weekend to close UNSW Asia after
talks with the Singaporean Government failed to produce a rescue
deal for the campus, which was struggling to survive on a tiny
student population.
"It was really a brave initiative, but it was really the numbers
and the inability to get a support package that [made] it
unviable," the university's vice-chancellor, Fred Hilmer, said
yesterday. He admitted the venture had always been risky and that
he did not know of any Australian universities making money in the
overseas campuses they had pegged as the solution to their
financial woes.
Offshore education is now worth $30 billion worldwide. Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development figures show Australian
universities enrol about one third of their students
offshore.
The closure announcement comes a day after the university revealed
it was shedding all casual staff and some subjects in its arts
faculty, and less than a year after a redundancy program that
involved 10 per cent of its non-academic staff.
UNSW Asia was planned as a unique venture among overseas operations
of Australian universities, both in terms of its scale and that it
planned to conduct research as well as teaching.
It was banking on a student population of 15,000 over the next 20
years, but it decided to close after enrolling fewer than 150
students this semester, less than half the anticipated
number.
The university has already spent $17.5 million on the project, but
it had guaranteed a further $140 million for the construction of a
permanent campus in South Changi.
Professor Hilmer said the university had lost $15 million in not
reaching its anticipated enrolment numbers, and as a result it was
unable to borrow the money it needed. "I don't want to play a blame
game [but] I inherited a situation," he said.
"But I know that the council and senior management took it in good
faith."
Singapore has invested heavily in higher education with hopes of
becoming an overseas student destination in its own right, and its
national universities are cheaper than the foreign ones.
The market was always going to be difficult for an Australian
university to compete in, said Carolyn Allport, the national
president of the National Tertiary Education Union.
John Kaye, the NSW Greens education spokesman and a former lecturer
at the University of NSW, said the failure of the campus would be a
blow to the university's reputation in the international student
market. "It's huge egg on their faces as a provider in South-East
Asia," he said.
Simon Marginson, a professor in higher education at the University
of Melbourne, said UNSW Asia was never in the university's
interests because it was designed for "B" students, while the best
students went to Singapore's own universities. "This was not good
given that UNSW itself is a world class research university not far
below National University of Singapore and at least as strong as
Nanyang IT."
