Fewer than 100 students have graduated from "white elephant" Scots university New York campus
dailyrecord.co.ukFewer than 100 students have graduated from a New York satellite of a Scots university since it was launched nearly eight years ago.Glasgow Caledonian has doled out £21.4m in loans to the controversial campus, which has only brought in a fraction of that sum in tuition fees.Mary Senior of the UCU trade union said: “UCU has consistently argued that Glasgow Caledonian’s New York campus didn’t make educational or economic sense.
The few graduations since 2014 underlines this point.“University bosses should be reversing the real terms cut in pay that staff have endured for the last decade and improving working conditions, instead of diverting resources to overseas vanity projects.” The New York project, backed by principal Pamela Gillies, was officially opened by former First Minister Alex Salmond in 2014.
Nicola Sturgeon visited in 2015 and described it as an “absolutely fantastic development”.However, the scheme failed to get off the ground in the early years.Protracted discussions with state authorities meant Caley’s New York outpost was only able to start awarding degrees from 2017.Covid also had a negative impact and the subsidy from Caley, known as the University for the “common good”, has grown over the years.New figures obtained by the Record show that 129 students have enrolled on degree programmes since the campus was granted a license to deliver these courses.But only 77 students have graduated from the institution.Caley entered into a loan agreement with the New York offshoot, of which £21.4m had been drawn down by July 2020.Caley’s latest accounts also reveal that a £3.2m grant was provided to the project, with recruitment conditions described in the latest university accounts as “challenging”.Net income from
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