‘The Board of Directors greatly values a support base for the Yantai campus and has therefore decided to turn the University Council’s right of advice into a right of consent’, the RUG reported Wednesday evening. That means the Council will have the final say.
The faculty councils involved in ‘Yantai’ will also have the right to consent to the faculty plans, the letter to the minister reads.
Necessary
On Wednesday, the Lower House discussed the legislation that will enable transnational education with Bussemaker. This law is necessary for the RUG to be able to set up a branch campus in China.
Governing parties VVD and PvdA approve of research universities and universities of applied sciences providing complete educational programmes abroad. However, they would not discuss the RUG’s actual plans for a Yantai campus any further.
According to them, it concerns the legislation in general and not this particular case. VVD MP Duisenberg: ‘We will lay down our conditions, China will lay down theirs. And if these conditions do not converge, the deal is off.’
Human rights
Opposition parties such as D66, GroenLinks, SP, and CDA are worried about such issues as inadequate human rights in China, academic freedom, and how this will affect the quality of Dutch education.
They also want to know if students and staff at the Yantai campus will have take classes in Marxism and have to undergo military training, which Chinese law supposedly says.