CityU staff back plan to review degrees axe
Staff from City University's College of Higher Vocational Studies have welcomed the decision by the executive committee of the university's council to form a working group to study the future of its associate degree programmes.
The committee will recommend the setting up of the working group to the council later next month to examine the financial viability of offering the programmes on a self-financing basis. This follows protests from 300 staff and students earlier this week over plans to phase them out from next year.
Fung Wai-wah, spokesman for the Save CityU College Action Group, said he was pleased with the working group's composition, which includes three external council members, two management representatives and two elected college members.
Mr Fung said: 'We hope management will provide adequate information to help members make a fair decision.''
CityU management board's earlier decision to phase out 13 of its 19 sub-degree programmes, because of the government's withdrawal of funding, triggered strong staff opposition. Up to 200 jobs are at stake.
CityU and Polytechnic University are the key providers of government-funded sub-degree programmes.
PolyU will lose government support for about a third of its programmes, in areas such as accounting, bilingual communication or IT, similar to those at risk at CityU.
PolyU's vice-president Philip Yeung Kwok-wing said it would offer about half the 500 student places affected on a self-financing basis from 2006. The rest would be scrapped.
