Scottish university to open Asian campus

Scottish university to open Asian campus, offer bilingual education

Edinburgh-based university will offer degree courses taught in Chinese and English, with an eye to attract China students. -ST

Wed, Feb 13, 2008
The Straits Times

A SCOTTISH university is blazing a new trail in bilingual education here.

The Edinburgh-based Queen Margaret University (QMU) is opening an Asian campus in Singapore, offering degree courses taught in Chinese and English, with an eye to attracting China students.

The university, ranked 58 last year in The Times newspaper's league of British universities, will set up a branch campus in Balestier.

It is partnering local private school, the EASB Institute of Management, which has been offering QMU courses for the last seven years. At the new campus, students can enrol in courses in finance and tourism.

The Scottish university will take charge of the academic side of things and send lecturers to teach at its campus here.

The campus can take up to 6,000 students and will open in April.

Mr Andrew Chua, chief executive officer of EASB, said: 'The model combines QMU's academic excellence and international reputation with EASB's strength and experience in delivering career- ready graduates for the region.'

EASB now has about 2,000 students pursuing degree courses in areas like business and hospitality.

It is the latest private school to bring in foreign institutions to run degree courses. Canada's University of New Brunswick was brought in by local education group Stansfield to set up a campus here at the start of the year.

Several other schools offer degree courses run by foreign universities, but these are not directly managed by the foreign institutions.

Over the past few years, many foreign institutions, notably New York University's Tisch School of The Arts, have set up campuses here, boosting Singapore's ambitions of attracting 150,000 foreign students by 2015.

Currently, there are about 80,000 foreign students here.