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SO WHAT ABOUT WELSH UNIVERSITIES?

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has announced that three quarters of English universities are facing a real term cut of £573m from this year's budget, with unions warning of hundreds of job losses.

Indeed, some are facing cuts of up to 14 per cent in their budgets for next year.

As yet, universities in Wales has not been told of the financial settlement from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) but if assume the Barnett formula, this could amount to as much as a £30 million cut in Welsh higher education.

Will HEFCW ensure that all universities have to cut proportional to the grant they receive or will they, thanks to intense lobbying by certain vice chancellors, try and protect some institutions from the worst cuts. For example, three institutions - Cardiff, Glamorgan and Swansea - receive over half of HEFCW's funding. Will these three also therefore be subject to the same proportion of the cuts expected in government funding? Will there be 'chwarae teg' for all universities in Wales?

In addition, there is the question, as higher education policy is devolved, whether such cuts will passed on in full to universities in Wales or, as the First Minister has promised, will "education will increased by at least one per cent above the block grant allocation"?

Comments

Jeff Jones said…
If the Western Mail is right then the vision of the Assembly for higher education is rooted in the Soviet Union of the 1920s where men of 'vision' and 'drive' such as Breznehev studied engineering. How you develop more engineers without first solving the lack of trained maths and science teachers is of course not explained.It will also be interesting to see how schools such as my local comprehensive will handle the expected £100,000 deficit in its budget because they haven't got enough money to finance the teacher's award.As for all the redundant non engineering lecturers, they can always retrain to teach Brazilian Ju Jitsu to the good folk of Plas Madoc!
March 19, 2010 9:39 am
Professor Dylan Jones-Evans said…
I think Michael Moritz made the same point, Jeff.
March 19, 2010 10:31 am
Anonymous said…
What is going to happen to those universities above the Merthyr Tydfil line that Cardiff cannot see beyond?
Bangor & Aberystwyth for example.
March 19, 2010 10:55 am
Pelagius said…
Totally share your concerns about the sneaky university cuts here. Although opposing the cuts, I have a positive money-saving suggestion to make. Cut all the mass-duplicated, bureaucratic, university administration by creating a single modern, academic award validating centre. Err, a "University of Wales"?
March 19, 2010 11:24 am
Professor Dylan Jones-Evans said…
Anon - that is the real worry - smaller institutions will bear the real brunt of cuts because I doubt if HEFCW has the courage to make reductions to the larger institutions

Pelagius - you may well say that, I can't possibly comment:)
March 19, 2010 7:14 pm
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