Super-college to go ahead despite Stow withdrawal
Plans for a multi-million pound super-college serving Scotland's largest city will go ahead despite a decision by one of the key partners to drop out.
The Scottish Funding Council said the £300m project in Glasgow's city centre would proceed with the three remaining colleges after the sudden withdrawal of Stow College.
Officials at Stow said the decision to withdraw from New Campus Glasgow, revealed in The Herald yesterday, came after attempts by the funding council to accelerate a merger of four city centre colleges, rather than pursue the original plan for a co-location, where each college kept its own identity.
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Yesterday, John McClelland, chairman of the funding council, wrote to the three remaining colleges of Central, Metropolitan and Nautical - assuring them of the project's future.
"Given that the boards of the three remaining colleges have agreed to the vision of a single college fit for the 21st century in the centre of Glasgow, we believe that we have the prospect of making rapid progress towards this vision," he said. "We remain enthusiastically committed to working with the three colleges to create the modern, innovative, new city campuses on Cathedral Street and Thistle Street that Glasgow needs.
On Thursday, Bob McGrory, the principal of Stow College, warned that any attempt to speed up the process by the funding council, which is bankrolling the capital cost of the project, could lead to job cuts.
"Gradual co-location would have allowed a transition without immediate job cuts, but it is obvious to anyone that there will be an impact on support-staff jobs and teaching jobs if merger happens more quickly," Mr McGrory said.
He went on to question the affordability of the project in a recession and said the size of the proposed campus was not in the best interests of students, staff or the community.
In May last year, the four colleges of Central, Stow, Metropolitan and Nautical Studies set up a company to deliver New Campus Glasgow, the biggest further education building project in Europe. It was originally proposed that the four colleges were to co-locate to a state-of-the-art campus in Cathedral Street and Thistle Street by 2012, with 50,000 students and 2000 staff.
The move was intended to prevent duplication of courses, save public money and provide modern facilities.
However, little progress has been made in moving towards the co-location and the funding council has been increasingly concerned about the logjam.
A briefing document prepared by the funding council for last month's meeting with Stow officials spoke of the need to provide "urgent signals of real progress if the £300m is to be secured".
For the funding council, co-location would fail to deliver "pace, coherence of vision and external credibility", while an early four-way merger would provide a "clear signal of intent to the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council".
