“Queen’s University in Belfast is planning to make 150 academic staff redundant. The BBC has claimed that the university has blamed a funding shortage and the poor performance of some of its staff for the cutbacks. The university has told staff it needs to make cutbacks because it expects Government funding to be reduced. However, the Department of Employment and Learning said funding for this financial year has been increased …” (more)
[Belfast Telegraph, 12 June]
Queen’s University is glorifying its achivement of internalisation by flaunting its connection with Low Level Indian Universities. When contacted none of the top level (Universities within the top 20) Indian Universities showed any interest to do any collaborative work. The Deemed University (BESU) which gave a Honarary Doctorate to the VC of Queen’s is tainted with repeated student agitation and violence. Even when the VC of Queen’s was visiting BESU there was problem. On March 19 two groups of students clashed leading to police being called in by the university authorities to restore peace. The campus was shut down indefinitely following the student clashes. Recently more than 150 non-teaching employees at Bengal Engineering and Science University (Besu) held a sit-in and threatened to intensify their agitation if the dispute over their salaries was not resolved soon. Two years ago it was declared that IIEST status will be conferred on BESU, but neither the state government nor the Centre is keen on conferring the status to the institute as it lacks the environement for proper education and its quality of infrastructure is very poor.