Second UK university to set up here

Second UK university to set up here

Campus which will take 3,000 to kick off next year

IT'S slated to start operations by the start of next year.

By Karen Wong


22 August 2008

IT'S slated to start operations by the start of next year.

On offer will be programmes in the business and management disciplines, like undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in accountancy, banking and finance and business information systems.

The University of Wales Institute, Cardiff's (UWIC) Asia campus will also run electives in casino management and events management.

The new campus, located at Henderson, will be able to accommodate up to 3,000 students, it said in a press statement.

UWIC is the second UK institution set to open its campus here in the space of a year.

In April, Queen Margaret University (QMU) Edinburgh became the first UK university to set up a campus in Singapore.

Its focus is on hospitality and tourism-related programmes.

Both the UWIC and QMU's Asian campuses are tie-ups with East Asia Institute of Management (EASB).

So far, the universities, under the private education organisations (PEOs) umbrella, that have set up campuses here, are from Australia.

Why two in a year?

EASB's chairman and chief executive, Mr Andrew Chua, told The New Paper that it just happened that the processes culminated around the same time.

'The idea of a branch campus for the two UK institutions had actually been mooted more than a year ago,' he explained.

'We have been talking to our university partners and we had to go through a lot of processes.'

Asked if there are more such tie-ups in the pipeline, Mr Chua, who heads the PEO, replied: 'Maybe not in the next year.'

UWIC, which is Cardiff's Metropolitan University, is known for its career-oriented degree courses, with 95 per cent of its graduates gaining employment, or going on to further studies, within six months of graduating.

Mr Chua indicated that about 50 per cent of lecturers who teach the UWIC programme here will come from the university itself.

The other half, mostly made up of local lecturers, will be assimilated by the universities as adjunct lecturers, he said.

He added: 'We believe that having a campus is the way to go for private education at a tertiary level.'



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