Queen Margaret University Announces Singapore Campus
Singapore
Queen Margaret University has announced plans to establish an overseas campus in Singapore, in collaboration with the East Asia School of Business.
The QMU Asia Campus will offer a variety of business management degrees, as well as courses in banking and finance, and will be opened in April. The enterprise builds on the university’s existing links with the EASB.
Professor Anthony P Cohen, principal of QMU, said: "This is an enormously exciting and innovative project for Queen Margaret University and for the EASB.
"It gives us both the confidence to extend our partnership for the great benefit of Singaporean and regional students and of the businesses for which they will eventually work.
"It is based on a sound record of collaboration which has succeeded over seven years because both partners are absolutely committed to the quality of our educational provision."
The venture is well placed to target the lucrative market for international students. It is hoped that Singapore’s booming tourist industry will attract undergraduates from across South East Asia, and, in particular, from China. To this end, the university will offer a bilingual English – Chinese curriculum.
Students will number around 1,500, with each paying an average of $10,000 a year in tuition fees. They will occupy existing, state of the art premises boasting tennis and basketball courts, as well as advanced classroom technology, and leased by the university at an estimated cost of $38 million in rent over the next 15 years.
Asia has recently attracted heavy investment from Western academic institutions. Australia’s Monash University have established overseas premises in East Asia, as have a number of American business schools, many of which have also settled in the Gulf.
Nottingham University is one of a number of UK universities also involved in the region, with facilities in Malaysia and China, whilst Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt university recently followed suit with a new campus in Dubai.
But QMU is the first UK university to set up a campus in Singapore, following Warwick University’s decision to abandon plans for a 15,000 capacity facility on the island in 2005, in response to concerns over academic freedom.
Singapore-based educational institutions are obliged to operate within the state’s strict legal framework. Warwick University staff and students expressed concerns over possible research restrictions as well as limits on freedom of speech, assembly and press on campus.
The withdrawal was seen at the time as a major blow to Singapore’s ambition to become a regional hub for higher education. However it was noted that Warwick hoped to offer a range of social science degrees, in contrast to the specialised, industry-focused courses more commonly offered by international institutions in Singapore.
The island already hosts a number of prestigious organizations, including the University of Chicago Graduate Business School and the German Institute of Science and Technology, as well as the Singapore-MIT alliance and Singapore-Stanford Partnership.
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