UIndy launches joint college
The University of Indianapolis has recently established an international partnership with ZYUFL-UIndy International College. This partnership will offer a joint-degree program that offers bachelor’s degrees in business or English.
The joint-degree program features a three-year associate’s degree with an option for students to complete their bachelor’s degree at UIndy.
President Beverley Pitts and Phylis Lan Lin, associate vice president for international partnerships, traveled to Shaoxing, China, for the opening ceremony of the ZYUFL-UIndy International College in September.
The first group of students will start attending classes at UIndy in three years.
“We won’t see any students for the next three years, but we will be sending faculty members there starting next fall. Next fall, they will start taking UIndy courses, primarily focused in business and English,” Pitts said.
The primary language of instruction will be in English for the next three years. Students at ZYUFL can benefit from the joint-degree program in a variety of ways.
According to Pitts, the type of students who are attracted to this type of program already have good English skills.
The partnership had been in the planning stage for two years. Lin traveled to China numerous times to set up the partnership with ZYUFL.
“The reason why the partnership took so long was because of the approval process. It had to go through a lot of steps,” Lin said.
The approval process involved a proposal to the board, faculty approval and university senate approval, as well as government approval in China.
The students at ZYUFL will benefit in a variety of ways from this partnership.
“They are going to have the living experience in U.S. They are going to have an American degree, exposure to American business,” Pitts said. “They [the students] will possess the Chinese experience and the American experience, social experience so when they go back to China they will be globally educated,” Pitts said.
UIndy currently has a five-year agreement with ZYUFL.
Both schools will be evaluating and measuring the success as the process goes along.
Pitts believes that in order to make the new partnership financially viable, the total enrollment will be around 50 to 100 students. With the current numbers, Pitts is optimistic about the partnership
Up to 300 Chinese students will be admitted each year and will have the chance to receive an associate’s degree awarded by both UIndy and ZYUFL in business or Applied English. The graduates will then be eligible to apply to UIndy or other U.S. institutions to receive their bachelor’s degree. Pitts said this is great incentive since the opportunity of receiving a bachelor’s degree isn’t always open to students in China.
The joint-degree program is UIndy’s second partnership with a Chinese college. UIndy also currently holds a joint-degree program with Ningbo Institute of Technology that offers bachelor’s degrees in business or English. With this program, qualifying students have the option of completing their degrees on UIndy’s home campus after they study for two years on the Ningbo campus. This program has produced more than 400 graduates, with nearly half of them who earned their degrees from UIndy.
