Student travelled 5,000 miles to discover GMIT course cancelled

A South American student travelled around 5,000 miles across the Atlantic to study a course at Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) – to find it was cancelled abruptly and doesn’t exist.

The woman from Venezuela, who paid up to €15,000 for course fees plus travel and accommodation expenses, was only told of the course’s cancellation after she had arrived in Ireland.

The farce has been branded “ridiculous” and “unacceptable” by Galway TD Paul Connaughton – a member of the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee charged with examining the cost of an external investigation into plagiarism at the college.

Red-faced management at the Dublin Road campus have confirmed that the international student was never told that the course was conditional on there being sufficient numbers enrolled.

The college has confirmed it cancelled the programme on September 1 due to a lack of interest, but didn’t tell the woman until she turned up for lectures.

The student had obtained a student visa, and travelled to Ireland at her own expense, only to arrive in Galway and find, to her astonishment, that the course was cancelled.

It is understood other Irish students who had enrolled on the course had been given advance warning of the course cancellation.

For the full details on this story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune