From humiliating financial bungling and loss of face in its failed Asian campus venture to a mortifying police probe into cadaver abuse at its medical school, the past three years have seen UNSW make headlines for all the wrong reasons.
In 2007, some months after the macabre cadaver scandal erupted, the university was forced to make an embarrassing public apology to relatives of people whose donated bodies were allegedly inappropriately handled, sexually interfered with, and fondled by trainee surgeons.
Around that time (though not barely approaching such depths on the depravity meter) the university also lost some $50 million dollars in its disastrous UNSW-Asia campus venture in Singapore. Blame for this expensive failed investment was sheeted home variously to bad governance and bad management by the university.
Just a few short years later, in 2009, UNSW was again in the spotlight after bad investment losses contributed to a fall of $67 million in net equity.
Fortunately for UNSW, its losses were salvaged by a massive injection of cash from the Federal Government’s stimulus funding, with a big slice of that – $48 million – snookered by CoFA for its campus redevelopment.
UNSW vice-chancellor Fred Hilmer said the university accounts contained a simple message for the federal Government: "Keep (the infrastructure money) coming."
Armed with its windfall booty and seeking to rush out and spend, spend, spend in undue haste, UNSW is now seeking to overturn NSW Department of Planning and City of Sydney Approvals on mitigating residential impacts in the construction of its Paddington CoFA campus.
Similar belligerence by UNSW has also made news just down the road in Darlinghurst, where vice-chancellor Hilmer and Lord Mayor Clover Moore are at odds on the oversized development of the university’s Virology Centre on Victoria Street.
As well as bulldozing heritage buildings that front the street, the scale of the development does not conform with previous proposals in its masterplan.
Going on UNSW past and current form, Truck Off Cofa is not the least bit surprised.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
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3 comments:
THE 'DEAL IS ALREADY DONE', NOW SUFFER THE
CONSEQUENCES
SUKERS !
I hope the deal isn't already done.
I believe it's before council now, with concerned parties having until 8 March to voice their complaints. So the idea is to speak up and be heard. I think this is called democracy.
Quote from a Singapore blog after UNSW announced the closure of the Singapore campus (2007)
"I was a proud student of UNSWAsia just 5 days ago. Now, I am totally disgusted and unsatisfied with the way I am been treated. I was a victim to the schools unethical 'trap' right from the start!
Are there no moral justices with regards to this matter which the affected students and staff can rely on?
Since Wednesday, I’ve been spending sleepless nights thinking about my future and the additional and hidden expenses which I will be incurring if I take up the offer to study in UNSW Sydney. So why should I still continue to study with the institution which have toyed with my dreams? The answer is simple. We as students are not given a fair choice."
Sound familiar?
http://tomorrow.sg/archives/2007/05/24/unsw_singapore_campus_to_shut_in.html
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