The above picture shows the construction site for what was meant to be UNSW Asia's Changi campus; additional photos www.library-gallery.unswasia.edu.sg/main.php other items Web

After just one semester, University of New South Wales decided to close its Singapore campus, with enrolled students being offered transfers to the Sydney campus with financial assistance to defray the additional cost involved. What happened to cause this drastic decision, which must be highly embarrassing to both the University and its Singapore backer the Economic Development Board? Even now, construction is still proceeding on what was meant to be UNSW Asia's permanent campus at Changi, and it is estimated that the cost of the land and building so far is nearly $250M. While the initial student numbers might have fallen short (150 instead of 300 for the first semester), it is still early days, and the decision meant that UNSW does not believe a desired trend reversal is possible.

For the EDB, the venture is eventually to produce a university of student population 15,000, 2/3 of them from outside Singapore; with tuition around 25K and living cost, 10,000 foreign students would inject $350M into the Singapore economy. When UNSW presented revised plans with target population of a few thousand, the venture was no longer viable from EDB's point of view.

UNSW has a record of being innovative in its development. When the MBA degree was till a relatively obscure concept in the country, it started the Australian Graduate School of Management in 1977, which grew to be the premium MBA school in the region. It set up a consulting company Unisearch to market its expertise and research results to the industry, and developed UNSW Global unit to recruit foreign students, with a Foundation Year that bring them to matriculation standard. These and other work brought it to the top of the ranking lists of Australian universities, surpassing older but more conservative institutions like Sydney and Melbourne. Thus, it went into the Singapore venture with considerable confidence.

In my view, this confidence has been the cause of the venture's failure. Instead of an incremental approach, starting with a small infrastructure and low cost activities and adding to these as student numbers increased, it invested heavily in a large operational set up, as can be seen in the web information about the Library that you can access using the two buttons at the top of this article, and in regional recruitment campaigns, instead of starting first with a mainly local student population, with much lower cost recruitment efforts as they would be within a single city, and gradually expand outwards. In fact, it met the initial target of 100 local students, but got only 50 of the 200 foreign students it hoped to attract. While many students in China, India and Indonesia might be interested in a degree from UNSW, they might find it worthwhile to pay a little more and go to the Sydney campus, in order to experience life in Australia.

According to UNSW vice-chancellor Fred Hilmer, who flew in to Singapore to break the news, "This venture was, perhaps in hindsight, a little bit too ambitious ... we didn't have the balance-sheet strength to undertake the venture," he said. "Geography is really important. When a student says, 'I want an Australian degree', what he really means is, 'I want the experience of living in Sydney' … The lesson we learnt is a student comes as much to a geographic destination as they do to a brand of a university," he said. Surely these are things UNSW already knew before starting the venture, but they probably thought the EDB offer of a brand new campus and other support too good to refuse. (One Australian press report says the university council took just 30 seconds to discuss the proposal before approving it.)

I cannot help but to quote Brutus saying to Cassius in "Julius Caesar":

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures

added on 30 May 2007: addtional reports say UNSW re-negotiated the EDB support package in August 2006 and tried to obtained a A$100M loan to fund the campus; the number of 80M has been thrown about as the value of the EDB support package, but it is not clear what it consists of, since there could be exemption from payment for the use of the campus site (both the temporary one in Tanglin and the permanent one in Changi still under construction), tax exemptions, start up grants, per capita support payment for students (which for NUS/NTU constitutes 75% of the cost per student), etc.

added on 3 june 2007: a new ST report says UNSW put over $20M into developing the current campus, EDB somewhat less; this does not include, on NSW side, its cost in transferring students and possibly some staff to Sydney, and on EDB side, the Changi campus, since these are separate from the existing temporary campus; this amount of money is a major one to NSW, neligible to EDB

I believe it would be very difficult, after the Johns Hopkins and NSW events, to get a well known university in the west to come to Singapore; a university from China would be an easier target, first because decision makers in China are very daring, second because it would be able to attract donations from private foundations and businesses in Singapore

added on 26 June 2007: during a recent trip to USA I pass through Ann Arbor and happen to run into a woman whose husband is moving to Georgia Tech soon, who told me that his advisor at Georgia Tech has just been appointed vice provost for its Singapore Campus, which will have about 60 faculty posts; it is not clear however whether that is meant to replace the previous NSW campus.

also read in the news that NSW need to return the Changi land to Jurong Town Corp (a government owned developer that builds/manages industry-oriented buildings), removing any foundation works already put in; however, this sounds like a oversimplified story - I believe it is a negotiation tactic