Queen’s College criticised over India campus after NI activity cuts

Queen’s College Belfast has been criticised for its determination to open a campus in India, after it introduced 270 activity cuts in Northern Eire via a voluntary redundancy scheme.

The College and School Union, which represents most of the college’s instructing group of workers, described the transfer as “scandalous”.

It stated Queen’s receives “vital investment” from Stormont and accused the college of the use of public cash to fund redundancies in Belfast whilst increasing in a foreign country.

On the other hand Queen’s stated it was once going through a monetary deficit amid a “sharp decline” in global scholars and so it needed to take quite a lot of movements to chop its prices. It added the redundancy scheme was once wholly voluntary.

The 270 redundancies at its Belfast campus had been introduced in October.

It equates to greater than 5% of the college’s group of workers.

On the time, BBC Information NI noticed paperwork which recommended Queen’s College Belfast (QUB) was once going through a deficit of greater than £11m for the monetary yr 2024-25.

Then remaining week, the college introduced that it plans to open a campus in Gujarat Global Finance Tec-Town (GIFT Town) in India subsequent yr.

It stated the transfer would “fortify partnerships and alternatives for innovation with native trade, executive and industry sectors throughout India and Northern Eire”.

To start with, the brand new campus will be offering 5 postgraduate programmes which QUB stated can be “adapted to the particular wishes of the Indian financial system”.

The College and School Union (UCU) accused the college of “directing taxpayer cash into axing jobs in Northern Eire whilst growing them on overseas shores”.

“It’s scandalous that QUB is hanging huge quantities of cash into a brand new campus midway spherical the arena the entire whilst axing jobs in Belfast,” stated UCU basic secretary Jo Grady.

Katharine Clarke, from the UCU, advised BBC Information NI’s Excellent Morning Ulster programme that Northern Eire universities had been in a greater place financially in comparison to the remainder of the United Kingdom, as greater than 50% of the college’s investment comes from the Division for the Financial system.

She added that the college had no longer equipped a justified industry case, and it had no longer cooperated with offering monetary data to the union in a readable layout.

On the other hand, QUB appearing leader folks officer Alistair Finlay defended the verdict to open the campus in India, including that the present investment fashion for upper training didn’t paintings as the cash from Stormont didn’t quilt the prices of house scholars from Northern Eire.

He stated Queen’s was once making an investment between £5m-£7m within the new campus, nevertheless it anticipated the source of revenue to be about £1.1bn in yr two and develop additional after that.

Addressing considerations round monetary transparency with the union, Mr Finlay advised Excellent Morning Ulster that QUB had equipped a “great amount of data”.

“We now have finished the whole lot we will to have interaction with the business unions on this complete dialogue in order that everyone can perceive what’s riding this however we wish to stability our source of revenue,” he added.

The union has described the deliberate redundancies as “brutal and useless” and stated it was once deeply involved in regards to the workloads confronted through the rest group of workers.

It claimed the severance procedure “calls for candidates to stipulate how their tasks will probably be redistributed amongst ultimate colleagues or in a different way suppressed”.

In its remark, QUB stated it was once reacting to the monetary demanding situations “being confronted proper throughout the United Kingdom upper training sector”.

It defined that Northern Eire universities “face an extra problem” on account of a cap at the collection of “house scholars” it could admit.

In earlier years, QUB balanced its books in the course of the charges fees to global scholars, however there may be now a “sharp decline” in the ones scholars coming to the United Kingdom.