Merger of The Community College at Lingnan University and Lingnan Institute of Further Education to support future strategic and sustainable development

16 Nov 2016

 

Lingnan University announced today (16 November) the merger of The Community College at Lingnan University (CCLU) and Lingnan Institute of Further Education (LIFE) with effect from 1 July 2017. The merger aims to better utilise academic and other resources of CCLU and LIFE to support future strategic and sustainable development. The merged institute will retain the name “Lingnan Institute of Further Education” (LIFE).

 

LIFE and CCLU were established in 2001 and 2003 respectively to provide quality life-long learning and sub-degree programmes to meet the development and education needs of the society. Currently, CCLU offers full-time Associate Degree programmes only, whereas LIFE offers a wide range of full-time and part-time programmes including Higher Diploma, Diploma, Diploma Yi Jin, Top-up Degree and other lifelong learning courses. Starting from the 2017/18 academic year, LIFE will take over the Associate Degree programmes originally offered by CCLU. All Associate Degree students enrolled in or before the 2016/17 academic year will not be affected by the merger, and their graduation certificates will be issued by CCLU.

 

“Over the past two years, CCLU and LIFE were under the process of resource and operation integration. Currently, programmes offered by CCLU and LIFE were operated by unified management, academic and administrative teams. After the merger, we will be able to achieve better resource utilisation and integration of competitive edges to support our future strategic and sustainable development,” said Dr Raymond Ng Chi-wing, Director of CCLU and LIFE.

 

In the future LIFE will focus on the development of vocation-oriented programmes, and offer more overseas top-up degree programmes for its sub-degree graduates to complete their degree studies on Lingnan University’s campus. In addition to the Higher Diploma in Sports Coaching and Leadership programme launched in the 2016/17 academic year, LIFE will launch a new Higher Diploma in Early Childhood Education Programme in the 2017/18 academic year to meet the manpower and development needs of the early childhood education sector. The institute will also continue to develop more lifelong learning programmes with the aim to provide a quality further education platform for the adult learners.