‘More students from China than from Northern Ireland, commitee hears
There are more students from China at DkIT than there are from Northern Ireland, the Public Accounts Committee at Leinster House has been told and some light has been shed on how Chinese students are being recruited.
Meath TD Shane Cassells asked college president Ann Campbell about a number of ‘non compliance on procurement’ that was highlighted at the committee and focused in on a student recruitment agency, based in Beijing, referred to at the PAC as ‘supplier C’.
Ms Campbell said: ‘DkIT considers that supplier C should not be included in the list of non-compliance as this refers to a student recruitment agency based in Beijing.
‘It has recruited international students since the mid-2000s for DkIT. It would be very difficult logistically to find an agent in China through public procurement. One of the reasons for that is that business relationships in China are built very much on trust and getting to know people. We have been recruiting in China since 2002. When we went out to that market the first time, we were very unfamiliar with the market. We met a lot of agents that we gave temporary or short-term contracts to and they simply did not deliver students in the numbers that we need them to deliver on. We were very fortunate to meet this company around 2002-03 and we formed very good relations with it’
There are about 150 Chinese students at the college, but these are only a part of the 480 international students. And Sean Fleming, a TD from Laois, wanted to know about students from the North. Ms Campbell said there are 49 taken annually. She added: ‘It is very sad to say that we have more students from Beijing than we do from Newry’. She said that while the IT does a lot of school liaison in the North, a study had shown ‘a student in Armagh finds that his/her parents have not studied in the South’ and this, coupled with unfamiliarity with the systems, was an explanation for the numbers.