By Claire Warrender

FIFE’S NURSING students have reacted angrily to suggestions that the threat to their education in the region has been lifted.

And in a clear demonstration of these feelings, many final-year students donned campaign T-shirts bearing the “Save Our Campus” message to exams at Dundee University this week.

Their action follows an announcement by the university last week that it had hammered out a behind- closed-doors deal with Adam Smith College in Kirkcaldy, which has agreed to give nursing students access to its services and facilities.

However, while the college will deliver the first two years of the theoretical component of the nursing degree in Kirkcaldy, training in the final year will be delivered in Dundee.

The agreement follows a public outcry when it emerged last year that Dundee University planned to transfer all nurse education from its Kirkcaldy campus to Dundee by next September, amid fears students were largely cut off from the wider university experience.

There were claims last week that the campaign had been won, but it became apparent yesterday that students were far from happy and they branded the new plans unacceptable.

“We are not going to let the university steamroller these plans through without a fight,” said student spokesman Jim Balfour.

“Forcing final-year students to adapt to a new learning environment at the most stressful stage of the course is not acceptable to us.

“That the university can even suggest this is proof that they are completely out of touch with the experience of Fife campus students.”

Students will meet soon to discuss more fully what action they will take, but their response is likely to centre on the impact on students and what they describe as flaws in the consultation process conducted by the university.

“We have had entirely unsatisfactory involvement with this process, despite calling repeatedly for rigorous student consultation,” said Mr Balfour.

“All we have been offered are incomplete arguments without supporting evidence.

“To add insult to injury, we have been told our concerns are without foundation. We didn’t buy their rhetoric then and we’re not buying it now.”

He added that students still felt very strongly about the situation and viewed the proposals as diminishing the service offered by the Fife campus and as an attack on health and educational resources in the region.