Council wants insight into decision-making process
Investigation into Yantai should be finished this academic year
De Vries announced this last Thursday during the monthly council meeting. During the discussion of the investigation proposal, Calimero faction chair Floor Buigel asked if she would be reading the results before her year on the board was up. ‘It’s really difficult to predict the exact end date of the investigation, but I do hope we’re done by the end of the board year’, De Vries answered.
Long-awaited
In February of 2018, the university council put a stop to the plans to start a branch campus in the Chinese city of Yantai. At that time, the RUG had invested three years and three million euros into those plans. In spite of the investments, the council still had its doubts about the foreign campus’ budget and the support at the university, among other things.
Shortly after the council had voted against the plans, they asked the board of directors to investigate the project. The council wanted more clarity concerning the decision-making processes. How did a plan that had been underway for so long go so wrong?
Chairman
The entire council supported the request for the evaluation, and yet it has taken almost eighteen months before a suitable chairman was found. According to the current concept proposal for the investigation, Roel Bekker will be taking on this role.
Bekker has served as secretary-general at various Dutch ministries and was a professor of working relationships in the public sector at the University of Leiden from 2007 to 2014.