Doubts emerge over UK university’s South Korean campus

Doubts have emerged over the University of Aberdeen’s plans to set up what would be the first United Kingdom university campus in South Korea after differences of opinion with the Korean authorities over the kind of courses to be offered.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said in a despatch last week the plan to open the University of Aberdeen international branch campus in Hadong in South Korea’s South Gyeongsang Province was “highly likely to fall through”, and quoted local officials as saying Aberdeen had been reluctant to proceed with the project, which has already faced repeated delays over bureaucratic and financial hurdles.

The Hadong municipality last month sent Aberdeen a letter saying it would file a lawsuit against the university to recover its investment if the campus does not open in March 2018.

Hadong has finished the construction of a dormitory for professors and students on a 3,690 square metre site. A total of about KRW10 billion (US$9 million) has been injected into the project, the officials said. But the branch campus “has yet to form a faculty or submit a report on its purchase of facilities to the South Korean education authorities in the run up to its opening”, according to Yonhap’s 5 December report.

The Hadong campus plan was first mooted in 2013 as part of the South Gyeongsang provincial government’s push to establish the region as a centre of expertise in offshore engineering.

In August 2016 the education ministry in Seoul granted permission for one-year postgraduate degrees in petroleum engineering, subsea engineering with support from leading subsea companies, and oil and gas topside engineering specifically geared to the Korean market, an MBA in energy management, and PhDs.

The University of Aberdeen had suggested then that the courses could start as early as September the same year with as many as 18 members of the Aberdeen campus expected to transfer to Hadong.

Aberdeen said on its website it would “deliver a world-class centre” in Korea where students are taught by staff “engaged in cutting-edge research on campus, as well as by experienced industry specialists with a proven track record in the international offshore industry”.

Repeated postponements

However, after repeated postponements the ministry-approved courses themselves are in doubt as Aberdeen now says demand has shifted because of the global downturn in the oil and gas industry. The university wishes to change the types of courses it offers in Korea, saying there have been few student applications for the courses that had initially been envisaged.

“The downturn in the oil and gas industry has led to reduced demand for the types of degrees in offshore engineering originally envisaged for Hadong, which has been clearly demonstrated by low [student] application levels,” an Aberdeen university spokesperson said.

“Despite many efforts to adapt to the downturn and change the focus of the campus towards programmes that were more relevant to the new market conditions, such as degrees in decommissioning and renewable energy engineering, we have not yet received the necessary support in Korea to achieve this.”

Aberdeen last year had already changed its focus at its home campus in Scotland away from the types of courses mooted for Korea towards renewable energy and decommissioning, the latter being an area that would be “buoyant for years”, according to an Aberdeen official.

Aberdeen’s desire to change its focus has been complicated by the issue of funding from the Korean trade ministry and from local authorities in Gyeongsangnam-do Prefecture, Gwangyang Bay Area Free Economic Zone and the Hadong County municipality, which were based on the Scottish university’s initial proposal to the education ministry.

“Aberdeen is demanding that the South Korean municipalities provide it with KRW4 billion (around US$3.7 million) to help it make up for initial losses in the first 10 years of its operation, a sticking point in the implementation of the plan,” according to Yonhap.

The local municipalities undertook to provide finance for the campus constructions in exchange for Aberdeen committing to operate the Hadong campus for 10 years.

Aberdeen said talks would be held this month in a bid to resolve the issue. “We continue to seek a mutually agreeable way forward with our partners and we look forward to welcoming them to Aberdeen for further discussions later this month,” a university spokesperson said.