One of the world’s most famous universities is exploring setting up an overseas campus to serve the “vast numbers of highly qualified students” it takes from abroad.
If Imperial College London goes ahead, it will be the most prestigious British university to establish a campus overseas. Oxford and Cambridge, its greatest domestic rivals, have yet to take that step and the Imperial move could trigger another wave of expansion by British institutions, which have already increased their presence outside the UK.
Sir Roy Anderson, the university’s new head, told the Financial Times that overseas operations by universities including Imperial could contribute towards the rebalancing of the economy, at a time when the future of financial services – a previous mainstay – was uncertain.
Imperial’s head, known as the rector, said: “In this current downturn we should be thinking how the British economy is going to come out of this.” He suggested universities were part of the solution, since “Britain has a world-leading international business in higher education”. Imperial has thousands of foreign students in London.
He hoped to make a surplus from the overseas operation, which would be partly reinvested and partly used to improve facilities in London.
Sir Roy, who took the top job in July, brushed aside any suggestion that an overseas outpost would dilute the quality of students at its main campus in Kensington, saying the university would not consider expanding abroad if this were a risk. He was confident Imperial’s high number of top-quality foreign applicants would ensure that did not happen.
The plans are in their early stages. But Sir Roy, a career academic specialising in epidemiology who took time out in 2004 to serve as chief scientific adviser at the Ministry of Defence with the rank of permanent secretary, said: “The question in mind is whether we should have a formal campus overseas.”
Asked about the likely number of students, he said: “It’s not worth doing unless we do it in hundreds.” The campus would initially be devoted to masters degrees in a range of Imperial’s hallmark subjects such as medicine. As to whether Imperial might expand the foreign campus to include undergraduates, Sir Roy made clear this was a possibility as the branch developed in the long term – saying “it isn’t a five-year project, it’s a 50-year project”.
While declining to say when a campus might be established, the rector said there were four possible locations: China, India, a south-east Asian country such as Singapore, or an Arab emirate, “particularly Qatar or Abu Dhabi”.
Looking at its London base, Sir Roy said it might increase the proportion of non-European Union students – who can be charged a market rate that allows Imperial to make a profit – if the recession forced a government spending clampdown for 2010-11.
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Numbers winning places create housing headache
Imperial College London has been forced into the rare expedient of renting accommodation for its students from another university, because it has been caught out by the much higher than expected tally of students who won a place after meeting their triple A A-level conditional offers .
Sir Roy Anderson, rector, said the current academic year “was the first year we almost ran into trouble” because of the gulf between the number of triple As it had predicted when making offers and the number awarded by examiners.
Imperial’s temporary solution has been to rent accommodation “from a smaller university in London”, which he declined to name.
In the long term, he is acting on his view that A-levels have become easier by pressing ahead with his predecessor Sir Richard Sykes’ plans for a special Imperial exam to winnow out the most talented. Maths A-level, for example, was definitely easier than “20 years ago”, he argued.
Sir Roy said the exam was being tested in schools. But he could not predict when Imperial would start using it for admissions, because it was still in the experimental stage.
