Failures by the University of Wales to carry out financial and legal due diligence on overseas partner institutions have damaged the reputation of the country’s higher education, the Welsh education minister has said.
Leighton Andrews’ criticisms follow an investigation, published earlier this week, by the university watchdog the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education.
It found the university had been ‘culpably credulous’ in dealings with a Singapore business school, and had failed to establish the financial and legal standing of partners in Thailand and Malaysia.
Trouble arose over its programme of validation services for qualifications issued by an assortment of overseas institutions.
The QAA found ‘serious shortcomings in the operation of the university’s management of its collaborative arrangements’.
Andrews said: ‘The reputation of higher education in Wales as a whole is at stake.
‘It is vital the shortcomings highlighted in these reports are addressed by the University of Wales as a matter of the utmost urgency.’
The QAA said the university failed to exercise due diligence at Turning Point Business School, in Singapore.
‘In the light of the disappearance of the [business school’s] first owners… the university’s decision to accept the assertions of the new owners at face value, and not to set in train a more thorough due diligence process seems culpably credulous,’ the regulator found.
At the Accademia Italiana in Bangkok, the QAA said vetting ‘was inadequate in relation to due diligence enquiries on finances and the legal status of the partners’. Insufficient scrutiny of Fazely International College, Kuala Lumpur, had left the university open to public criticism, the QAA found.
A University of Wales spokesman said: ‘The officers of the university have reviewed the validation activity and have come to the view that the current model is no longer fit for purpose and consequently has already imposed a moratorium on all validation developments.’
