UCC staff raise concerns over 'rationale' for exchange programme with Chinese university
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Serious concerns have emerged among staff at University College Cork about a new exchange programme between the university and a Chinese institution.
UCC’s School of Digital Humanities has been developing a joint undergraduate programme with the Communications University of China in Beijing since early 2023.
However, there are concerns among staff about a perceived ill-defined nature of the programme and UCC’s reason for embarking on it in the first place.
Staff submissions to the College Academic Development Committee show a heightened level of scepticism among employees, with one academic saying there was no “rationale for programmes such as this beyond making money”, adding it was difficult to ascertain “what advantages it can bring the university (apart from monetary ones)”.
Another noted “collaborative degrees like this whose fees are extremely high (in this case higher than usual) do appear [to] have more to do with income generation than others”.
“I don’t think 'non-exchequer income generation' should constitute the rationale for the creation of a new degree even if it only constitutes part of that rationale,” the submission stated.
It is understood the planned programme is expected to generate roughly €300,000 in income for the university annually.
A spokesperson for UCC said “all programme proposals are subject to a multi-stage/multi-level approval process”.
“The development of this programme is following all these processes, in order to ensure a quality programme is created which fosters cross-cultural understanding by bringing together Chinese and Irish perspectives on digital approaches to humanities," the spokesperson added.