Via The Guardian:
The University of Tasmania will slash hundreds of courses from its curriculum as part of a major overhaul driven in part by an “overreliance on China” and the impact of the coronavirus.
On Tuesday, the university’s vice chancellor Rufus Black told staff the university was “facing sustained headwinds” to being sustainable, and would cut the number of courses on offer from 514 to fewer than 120 by next year.
In an extraordinary missive Black said the university had been “working against powerful forces” in becoming sustainable over an extended period, but that the combination of an “overreliance on China as a market for international education and what is now emerging as a pandemic” had forced the university to reevaluate its course offering.
“The impact of Covid-19 is still not certain,” Black said in the letter to staff.
“Thanks to the good work of our teams responding to the issue, the majority of our students in China and subject to travel restrictions have started study with us. But as we know the spread of the illness continues to shift. We have a long way to go in dealing with this issue and its consequences will last well beyond this year.”
Shut it permanently. Without Chinese students we don’t need education.
