January¡¯s announcement that Wales¡¯ flagship higher education institution, Cardiff University, plans to cut the full-time equivalent of 400 roles sent shockwaves?through a country whose higher education sector has relatively low participation rates, a history of institutional turbulence and a pioneering new regulator still finding its feet.

While deep job cuts are being made across the UK ¨C the University and College Union has estimated?that 10,000 jobs could be lost this academic year alone?¨C Wales has been hit particularly hard. Aberystwyth University and Bangor University have both announced plans for 200 job losses, and the University of South Wales 90 academic job cuts, on top of 160 professional services earlier lay-offs. And nearly 350 staff have left through a voluntary redundancy scheme at Swansea University, which, in February, announced plans to cut a further ?30 million from its budget.?

But it was the scale of cuts at the country¡¯s only Russell Group university (amounting to 7 per cent of the workforce) that really shook the sector. If , which closes on 6 May, confirms the cuts to nursing, ancient history, modern languages and translation, music, and religion and theology, there will be subjects that?will no longer be available anywhere in Wales.

Some relief has been forthcoming. Shortly after Cardiff¡¯s cuts were announced, Wales¡¯ minister for further and higher education, Vikki Howells, made available?an additional ?18.5 million?to fund ¡° to reduce operating costs, while also improving environmental sustainability and ensuring that facilities continue to be suitable for providing a high-quality student experience and delivering world-leading research¡±.

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Howells added that the?new Welsh tertiary sector regulator, Medr,?was already looking at ways to improve quality, governance, financial management and staff and student welfare, while she was also tasking it with carrying out a review of subject demand, provision and distribution of higher education in Wales.

This will ¡°consider where interventions might be required to ensure the continuation of strategically important subject areas in Wales that are vital to the success of public services¡±, she said. ?

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But that is an awful lot to take on for a brand new regulator, whose name ¨C Welsh for ¡°skill¡± ¨C reflects its novel remit to fund and regulate both further and higher education, as well as school sixth forms. The aim is to fulfil often-voiced ambitions for the two tertiary education sectors to work together more seamlessly, but Medr was only founded last August, and it only published its strategic plan in March; its operational plan is still pending.?

Given the financial crisis the sector is facing, ¡°you couldn¡¯t find a worse time to have a brand new funding body trying to work out what its mission is and how it¡¯s going to deliver it¡±, said Dyfrig Jones, senior lecturer in film at Bangor University and recently elected as vice-president of the University and College Union (UCU).?

While England¡¯s relatively new higher education regulator, the Office for Students, has adopted a much more hands-off, market-based approach than its predecessor, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, since it was launched in 2018, Medr retains the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales¡¯ remit to intervene when it deems it necessary.

But Dylan Jones-Evans, an entrepreneurship scholar who was assistant pro vice-chancellor (enterprise) at the University of South Wales between 2018 and 2022,?argued that the body has so far fallen short on its financial oversight responsibilities, saying there has been a lack of transparency over what it has done to help struggling providers.

¡°It¡¯s as if, essentially, higher education policy went into a vacuum for a year and nobody took responsibility for it,¡± he said, noting that?Aberystwyth only has 30 days of liquidity??¨C one of the lowest in the UK. Meanwhile, Swansea outlined in its 2024??that it had had to renegotiate with its banks after it risked breaching two of its covenants. Bangor has yet to submit its annual accounts for 2023-24.?

¡°You¡¯ve got three institutions there which, in terms of Medr¡¯s financial oversight role ¨C one of the critical roles it has ¨C [the regulator] seems to have just said, ¡®Everything¡¯s fine. There¡¯s no issue¡¯. But clearly there are issues,¡± Jones-Evans said.?

A Medr spokesperson, however, insisted that the body had delivered a?¡°smooth transition¡± from HEFCW: ¡°We have continued to fulfil the regulatory functions executed by HEFCW, ensuring that the processes, knowledge, relationships and experience have continued into Medr as we monitor and provide assurance about higher education providers.¡±

The regulator ¡°works closely with all our providers to give assurance to stakeholders and students¡±, the spokesperson added, including ¡°monitoring their long-term sustainability and safeguarding public funds¡±.

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The issues facing any Welsh regulator are particularly difficult. The Welsh government recently?increased its tuition fee cap?for the coming academic year to ?9,535, in line with England ¨C the second consecutive year that fee rises have been announced. But that value is still failing to keep up with rising costs; as Cardiff¡¯s consultation document puts it, ¡°The financial benefit of greater volumes of [undergraduate home] fee payers, once indicative overheads are taken into account, is now negligible¡±, ruling out expanded enrolment as a way to close the .

But even if the fee were higher, increasing student recruitment may not be an option for many lower-ranking Welsh institutions given what Estelle Hart, president of Swansea¡¯s UCU and associate board member of Medr, calls the ¡°participation crisis¡± that Wales faces.

Just 32 per cent of Welsh 18-year-olds applied to university this academic year, compared with 33.2 per cent last year,?. Across the UK as a whole, the figure stands at 40.6 per cent. Nor does the picture get any brighter regarding mature students, with Wales now seeing lower numbers applying to university than at any point in the past decade.

The lack of students is exacerbated by an existing brain drain from Wales into other parts of the UK. In the academic year 2022-23, the Welsh government spent ?1.2 billion on grants for Welsh students, of which 45.2 per cent (?519 million) went to students studying outside Wales, according to the?.

Leighton Andrews, who was minister for education and skills in the?Welsh government?between 2009 and 2013, suggested to Times Higher Education that ¡°in an increasingly market-driven university sector, Wales will want to keep as much of Welsh public funding in Wales as it can¡±.

As minister, Andrews oversaw a somewhat acrimonious period of consolidation in Welsh higher education, driven through by HEFCW, which reduced the number of universities in the country from 11 to eight.

Andrews ¨C who, as professor of practice in public service leadership and innovation at Cardiff, is at risk of redundancy ¨C said that at the time of assuming office, he was ¡°very conscious¡± that there had been discussions around a ¡°higher education reconfiguration agenda in Wales going back probably to the early 90s¡±. This, he felt, was ¡°getting in the way of intelligent conversations in Wales between the government and the university sector about university contribution to the economy¡±, which made him ¡°pretty determined¡± to bring the reconfiguration agenda to fruition.

In the early 2000s, HEFCW had been tasked by the government with reviewing the setup of the sector after a that it could face a ¡°spiral of decline¡± if action wasn¡¯t taken to shore up ¡°dangerously small¡± institutions; no Welsh provider had more than 15,000 students at the time.

The University of Wales, Lampeter and Trinity University College Camarthen were into the University of Wales Trinity St David, with the subsequent closure of Lampeter¡¯s 200-year-old facilities proving controversial. ¡°Lampeter is not only Wales¡¯ oldest university institution, but a pillar of its educational and cultural history¡±, read a??that garnered over 4,000 signatures that is still on the Welsh government¡¯s website.?

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Three years later, Swansea Metropolitan University was merged into the new organisation, too. And in the same year, 2013, the University of South Wales was created through the merger of the former University of Glamorgan and the University of Wales, Newport. The Welsh government had tried to include Cardiff Metropolitan University in the merger, too, but the provider had called the move ¡°¡±.?

Andrews believes that Wales¡¯ consolidation project is now ¡°complete¡± and rejects any thought that further mergers might be one way to mitigate current difficulties. ¡°I don¡¯t think anybody would want to reawaken the reconfiguration agenda,¡± he said.

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One person who does, however, is Jones-Evans. Last year, he wrote an suggesting that sector survival in Wales might require the consolidation of the eight existing institutions into just four.

He told Times Higher Education that he still thought the Welsh higher education landscape may need to change ¡°dramatically¡± to meet the scale of the challenge. He conceded that trying to reduce the number of universities further would be as difficult as ¡°trying to reduce the [professional] rugby teams of Wales from four to two: it¡¯s never going to happen¡±. Yet if the country were to design its higher education system from ¡°a blank sheet¡±, it would not establish so many separate institutions.

Rather, it would establish ¡°one global university, which should be Cardiff¡± ¨C or ¡°potentially two with Swansea, but I don¡¯t think that will ever happen, unfortunately¡±. That global institution would ¡°work with the others, and with the next tier in particular, especially in terms of research¡±. At that ¡°redbrick¡± tier, Jones-Evans¡¯ article suggested merging Bangor and Aberystwyth, and he told THE that while ¡°you¡¯re never going to recreate the University of Wales¡­you could see Bangor, Aberystwyth?and Swansea working far more closely together at that level¡±.

There then are the post-92s. Jones-Evans suggests these could be merged into just one multi-site ¡°Polytechnic of Wales¡± ¨C an idea first conceived by former University of Glamorgan vice-chancellor Adrian Webb, with whom Jones-Evans used to work. Financial stability could be provided by giving the polytechnic ¡°the big nursing contracts and the big teacher-training contracts¡±. And it would ¡°work far more closely with FE to be able to deliver a far more professional-level education across Wales. Every employer would be applauding from the rooftops.¡±

A Medr spokesperson said that while it has ¡°not received any contact from the Welsh government about reconfiguration¡±, its powers to force one through would ¡°theoretically¡± be similar to those exercised by HEFCW. At the very least, Jones-Evans said, Medr should encourage universities to work in partnership rather than competition with each other.?

¡°You¡¯ve had the [Cardiff-, Newport- and Pontypridd-based] University of South Wales seeing Cardiff Metropolitan University as their biggest competitor, rather than somebody they could collaborate with,¡± he said. ¡°If you¡¯re offering a subject area which is in decline in your university, and that same university you¡¯re in competition with is also seeing declines, you need to work a bit better together. That just hasn¡¯t happened.¡±

Without such a coordinated approach, warned Andy Williams, media spokesperson at Cardiff¡¯s UCU, Welsh students will be left with no choice but to attend university across the border as subjects are ¡°salami-sliced away¡±.?For that reason, he ¡°really welcomed¡± Medr¡¯s review of higher education courses in Wales.

Medr does not have powers to direct universities what to teach, but Simon Pirotte, Medr¡¯s chief executive, told Times Higher Education last month that the review could result in changes in funding distribution to protect subjects that are vulnerable or of particular cultural or strategic importance. He cautioned that there are ¡°lots of calls¡± on its budget currently, ¡°so there isn¡¯t a lot of spare cash floating around¡±, but ¡°we do give higher tariffs for medical places, for example. If government decided there were other areas that should be invested in, that¡¯s another conversation to have.¡± He also pledged to encourage collaborative working within the constraints of institutional autonomy and competition law.

However, Williams worries that the review may be ¡°too little too late¡± given the pace and scale of the cuts. The Royal College of Nursing, for example, has said Cardiff¡¯s proposed closure of its nursing courses would ¡°pose serious risks¡± to public health; its cuts to modern languages will see Portuguese and Japanese, among others, no longer taught in Wales, while musicologists have warned that closing music will require Welsh students to cross the border if they want to pursue a scholarly music degree.

And while Cardiff¡¯s School of Welsh has been spared cuts, Christie Margrave, a lecturer in French at Cardiff, pointed out that it has previously submitted to the Research Excellence Framework with modern languages, and many of its students pursue joint-honours courses with another language. So cutting modern languages might come into conflict with Medr¡¯s plan to increase ¡°participation in learning and assessment through the medium of Welsh¡±, as outlined in its?.?

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Pirotte that he was ¡°not concerned that a [Welsh] university is going to fall over in the near future¡± despite the ¡°extremely challenging¡± circumstances.

Nevertheless, there is little Medr can do to improve those circumstances. For that reason, Swansea UCU¡¯s Hart believes that focusing on the regulator¡¯s role during this baptism of fire ¡°is almost the wrong conversation¡± given the need for ¡°wholescale reform of HE funding¡±.?

However, on that topic, Jones-Evans sees an opportunity for Medr and Wales to set a lead for the rest of the UK ¨C as they already have on all-tertiary regulation. ¡°Why shouldn¡¯t Wales actually say ¡®this is what we think should happen in higher education¡¯, and recommend that to the UK government?¡± he asked.

Equally, however, Wales needs to keep its local needs front of mind, he stressed, noting that the history of Welsh higher education reflects its working-class heritage. One of the University of South Wales¡¯ , for instance, was the South Wales and Monmouthshire School of Mines, which offered courses for miners funded by a levy of one tenth of a penny on every ton of coal produced.

¡°Universities have become slightly detached from some of the reasons they were set up for originally, and some of the management of those universities has also become slightly detached,¡± he said.

Williams agreed that the Wales-wide picture should guide Medr as it finds its regulatory feet, and he suggested that the Welsh government may see the current crisis as an opportunity to ¡°rebalance¡± spending, focusing support on universities that are ¡°more in tune with its political and social agenda for Wales¡±.?

¡°Wales is a country,¡± he said. ¡°It might not seem like that to people who don¡¯t live here, but we¡¯re a country. We need to be able to stand on our own two feet and wash our face as a nation. Part of that involves having a functioning and comprehensive university system ¨C and that is under sustained threat and attack by these kinds of cuts.¡±

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juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com