Case study: PhD Studentship Partnership
A foreign scholarship council has suggested the University partner with a technology-focussed university in their country to jointly deliver PhD studentships in the field of cyber security.
The partner university is based in a country where there are well-documented national and economic security concerns. After three visits to the partner university and significant support time to get the arrangements in place, student recruitment commences.
The subject area of research is included in the list of codes subject to the Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS).
After two years, no ATAS certificates have been issued by the Government. No explanations are given for rejecting an ATAS certificate, but it is normally for some form of national security concern. The two universities agreed to amend the agreements to account for the lack of students. It’s now proposed to terminate the arrangement and the partner university has threatened to sue us in their local courts.
The University should have considered the origins of and motivations for the suggestion to partner with that particular university in that particular subject area. The time and resource wasted could have been used to support a more productive partnership, that would likely not result in cross-border legal action.