Many questions remain on Yantai

Today, we discussed the new concept version of the application for the Yantai Branch Campus in the University Council. You can read our contribution in the council below.

Introduction

Last Friday, the 35th edition of the Van der Leeuw lecture took place in the beautiful Martinikerk. David van Reybrouck spoke with passion about populism in Europe and the decolonization of Indonesia and Congo. While I listened to his story, one thing stood out, which brought my thoughts to our university and the application we’re discussing today.

Comparisons tend to fall short, so I won’t draw a parallel between the former colony and this council, but there certainly is one theme that kept coming up: having a say. How sham participation leads to discontent and bad decisions, and the importance of finding support for plans.
No one can deny that the application we have now, is much better than the one the council received in August. The reason we’ll have a discussion on a better application is the opposition of the former faction of the Personnel Faction and Lijst Calimero. I therefore want to thank the then members of those factions, either present here of elsewhere, for their courage. I hope that the opponents of then will also thankful for that.

Having said that, I will continue with discussing the concept application.

Benefits

In the new application, more benefits for students are named. We’re happy that the benefits now focus more on the chances researchers and students in China have, than the possible positive effect of UGY on the UG. However, the benefits are still scantly drawn up, vague and not tangible. Furthermore, many of the benefits only have an indirect effect on the quality of education, even though that’s the primary reason for establishing this campus according to the application. For the average UG student, Yantai won’t contribute to the value of their diploma.

If we look at the outlined benefits in the concept application, many of them affect only a limited number of students. One of the goals, stimulating student mobility and giving more students an experience abroad, is a fine goal on its own. How Yantai will contribute to this, isn’t sufficiently described. Only a part of all students in Groningen can make use of this benefit, even though improving existing exchange programmes across the university could yield the described result. We also doubt if this will have a positive influence on the International Classroom project. The intention is that as many cultures as possible come together in the lecture room. By focusing on Asia, either primarily or exclusively, this won’t have the promised effect, as giving education in a different cultural content won’t immediately lead to cultural exchange.

Regarding employability: the goals are mainly based on unfounded claims. A possible increase in international reputation is still indirect and unproven. It is questionable if UG student will get a better position on the global labour market. It is also unsure if Dutch students can easily enter the Chinese labour market.

In short, Lijst Calimero isn’t very convinced by the benefits for students until now. It is unclear if the goals mentioned in the application will actually lead to an improvement in the quality of education for UG students.

Risks

So, the expected benefits are unsatisfactory. But what about the risks? Given the limited speaking time, I will stick to the main bottlenecks.
First and foremost: the quality of the diploma. It remains a fact that Yantai will grant the same diplomas as Groningen. That means that we gamble away the value of our diploma twice. The quality of education in Groningen shouldn’t diminish, but at the same time the quality of the programmes in Yantai should be on the same level as here.

That raises questions. Can we hire good teachers in time? Will the vacancies be filled in time? Does the exit strategy cover enough of the present risks? Does the establishment of the campus have the desired effect on the rankings? Does the financial foundation give enough future perspective? These are questions which we will judge after the discussion in the council and the documents in February.

Academic Freedom

Moreover, academic freedom remains a tricky problem for us. Even though the safeguards regarding academic freedom have been improved since the last version of the application, the problem of building a campus in a country where you have no say in the rules remains. Recent news reports highlight that there is still a large difference between academic freedom by law and in practice. Think about Cambridge University Press and Springer Press, that both had to withdraw articles from their website under pressure from the Chinese government. And more recently, a report by the Financial Times that the Chinese government want to have a larger influence on international joint universities.

Even with the current safeguard problems can and will arise, even though academic freedom is a key condition for our education and research here in the Netherlands. We deeply question if we can fully guarantee academic freedom in a country like China at any time in the near future.

All in all, Lijst Calimero sees little benefits, substantial risks and academic freedom in jeopardy. We keep asking ourselves: why are we doing this again?