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EARTHQUAKE HITS THE WELSH UNIVERSITY SECTOR

One thing you can say about Leighton Andrews is that he is not slow in coming forward.

His statement yesterday has sent shockwaves of the 8.0 richter scale variety throughout the entire university sector in Wales.

Here is what he said in the chamber yesterday

“Wales has been dogged for years by many institutions which are too small to cut a mark internationally, too small to withstand and respond to the growing pressure of international competition, and in danger of wasting resources competing with neighbours rather than looking out from Wales to win reputation and research income. Currently only 36% of institutions in Wales have an annual income which is above the UK median, a situation that has changed little over many years. Additionally, colleagues will recall the findings of the PWC review that only 48% of university spending went on teaching, research and knowledge transfer, and 52% on support services. Today I am pleased to report that, in response to my remit letter, HEFCW has determined that by 2013 75% of HE institutions in Wales will have an annual income above the UK median, and none will be in the lower quartile. Llywydd, this target does not mean fewer students. But it is likely to mean fewer vice chancellors. We will have significantly fewer HE institutions in Wales but they will be larger and stronger. HEFCW will work with HE institutions to achieve this smoothly and rapidly with my full backing and of the Cabinet”.

So there we have it. The Minister has essentially told the vice chancellors that there will be fewer universities in Wales in 2013 i.e. they have essentially a couple of years to merge with other institutions in Wales.

So what are the potential mergers?

  • Bangor and Glyndwr – would make sense given the distinct geographical region that is North Wales and the business community in the region would be 100 per cent behind a new University of North Wales but as someone who was involved at the highest levels in the aborted merge talks of 2003, I have doubts if this would happen, especially given the appointment of a new Vice Chancellor at Bangor.
  • Bangor and Aberystwyth – would make sense in terms of establishing a rival research led institution to Swansea and Cardiff but this would only work if there was a clear delineation in subject areas across the two campuses as the distance is too great for any meaningful interaction i.e. science and business at Bangor; arts, humanities and social sciences at Aberystwyth. In that case, the Minister had better put a stop to the new Pontio Arts Innovation centre asap.
  • Swansea University and Swansea Metropolitan – potentially this could work but would the research led Swansea University welcome such a move? On the other hand, would the cash rich Swansea Met, which is the very model of an efficiently run institution wish to just hand over its money to a university that is less financially viable?
  • Swansea Metropolitan and Trinity St David’s – this would create a new super vocational university for West Wales, especially if it was strongly linked into the FE sector. However, would the Trinity St David’s focus on becoming the premier Welsh language university in Wales fit with Swansea Met’s aims of a technologically driven city-based institution
  • Glamorgan and Newport – seems most likely as the Minister is keen to push forward further with his University of the Valleys proposal where both institutions have worked closely together. The question, of course, is whether UWIC, which has developed rapidly over the last few years, would also be forced to join this merger and create a super technical university for South East Wales?

Of course, the real question is whether having less institutions in Wales will improve the quality of our institutions. There is certainly no guarantee that the mergers will improve research performance. For example, the University of Wales Cardiff was ranked 8th in the UK during the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise and yet, after the merger with the School of Medicine three years later, had plunged to 22nd in the 2008 research review.

If the Minister is keen to improve the research funding of Welsh institutions, then he should also make the case for Barnetising the research council income which is currently non-devolved. That would bring an additional £40-50 million into Wales every year to strengthen our research base.

There is also the issue that larger institutions are no guarantee of student quality in the long term. In fact, with pressures on universities to save money, the temptation will be to have larger classes and smaller numbers of teaching staff.

Finally, the smaller institutions in Wales tend to be exceptionally well managed financially whilst the larger ones have struggled in recent years. Would merger merely mean that the reserves of the better managed universities would be used to deal with the financial problems of the larger institutions?

Given this, the real question is how the universities in Wales, or more importantly, their leaders, will react to such a strong statement of intent? Many expect them to make some noise at first but eventually quietly capitulate to the plan and therefore ratifying the Minister’s earlier statements about the lack of leadership within higher education in Wales.

On the other hand, they could surprise us all and call the Minister’s bluff on the veiled threats to funding cuts for non-compliance and tell him, to use an academic term, to sod off.

After all, universities are independent institutions whose governing bodies should make decisions that are in the best interest of the university, its staff and its students and not for political expediency that suit a Minister who may no longer be in power in 2011.

However, such resistance would only work if the sector acted as one and not as individual institutions that act only out of self interest. Indeed, if the universities do go down this latter path, then the Minister may have inadvertedly succeeded in making the sector stronger for the benefit of the Welsh economy, but not in the way he envisaged.

Perhaps their best defence against mergers is the point that was made yesterday in the Western Mail when it was proposed that the number of councils in wales should be cut.

The response? "Reorganisation is hugely expensive and bearing in mind the scale of the challenges it is vital that we concentrate all our energies on delivering frontline services and protecting our communities.”

For councils, read universities?

One final point - there is also a political angle to this which no-one has yet mentioned.

Given that all mergers eventually lead to job losses and no guarantee of any improved service to students (which would take years to materialise anyway), could the Labour-Plaid coalition be handing the Liberal Democrats an electoral lifeline in seats such as Ceredigion, Swansea West, Wrexham and Newport East at the next Assembly elections. Certainly, if I were Kirsty Williams or a member of her team, I would start planning part of the next campaign around this very issue.

Comments

Lecturer said…
This ill thought out policy, shooting from the hip, to use a phrase familiar to you, will cause chaos in the sector. Nowhere does the Minister show how this will benefit Wales apart from his quip about less vice-chancellors.

Universities will use this as an excuse to further cut provision and the number of staff without any extra funding from HEFCW. The rebranding exercise alone will cost millions, especially after Bangor, Swansea and Aber have just spent a fortune on establishing themselves as independent universities.

Those of us working in the sector can only pray that vice-chancellors will finally "get it" and realise that their petty oneupmanship has led to this situation and they, and they alone, will be to blame for what will happen to their staff and students. They have one last chance to get it right and to start working together. If they do not, then the HE sector in Wales will be in serious trouble.
Anonymous said…
A good post with many excellent points. One or two things though:

"i.e. science and business at Bangor; arts, humanities and social sciences at Aberystwyth."

Aberystwyth has quite a strong science sector, including three dedicated buildings. Moreover, Bangor's history department isn't a bad one. I can't see either area being happy at the upheaval this idea would create - because they would, after all, have to move lock. stock and barrel. I would further add that the one serious attempt to collaborate on those lines - over IGER - was a short-lived and miserable failure that caused chaos, financial hardship and eventually job losses.

Trinity St. David's and Swansea Met are already informally collaborating with each other, Coleg Pembroke and Coleg Ceredigion in just the way you describe. I think a merger there, possibly still under the University of Wales banner, would make excellent sense, but it would probably happen faster if they thought it was their idea not that of a random politician (by which I mean Andrews).

Didn't Glyndwr University used to be part of Bangor a few years back, until it was hived off? Yet as you say, there are formidable obstacles in the way of a re-merger.

Finally, Leighton Andrews recently commented that he wondered if vice chancellors cared if the WAG had a strategy, or what it was. These smaller universities were mostly created ten years ago on the WAG's orders. Now he wants to change it all round again. So he has a strategy? Good news. He will be sure to let us know when it changes again, won't he?

I agree with the Lecturer above. I've never yet come across a cost-cutting organisation that wasn't expensive, protracted, and generally saw more resources diverted away from the front line - moreover, I research such things for a living, so I've come across quite a few. This could get very nasty.
Anonymous said…
I can see the LibDem campaign in wrexham now - Labour-Plaid to get rid of our local university.if they could galvanise the student vote, who is to say what could happen next May?
Anonymous said…
I wonder what the trade unions will say to Labour's education minister when hundreds of jobs are lost as a result of this action.

You can hardly blame the Tories for this as it is clear it has nothing to do with cost savings.
Lecturer said…
I do like the final line in Andrews' speech

"with my full backing and that of the Cabinet".

Can we therefore assume that all three Plaid ministers are in favour of reducing the number of Welsh universities with the resulting loss in jobs and the dilution of the student experience?

I don't remember that being in the OneWales manifesto?
Anonymous said…
Both Leighton Andrews and HEFCW's strategy documents are silent on extra revenues from undergraduate tuition fees. Small universities thrive in Canada and the US, where their smaller size contributes to the student experience and they can, in fact, charge a premium tuition fee.
As a Wales-based academic, I have already seen the extent to which research priorities skew academic research in ways that may not play to the strengths of the universities.
Finally, given the indifferent record of government-led efforts to invigorate the Welsh economy, why should we rely on WAG to identify the correct priorities? What insight to the future do they have that eludes experienced and expert academic researchers?
Mr Logical said…
Hello there Prof.

Having been away for the last few days it is interesting now reading what your esteemed Minister has to say. Someone has certainly upset him!!

Thinking logically then there's "something" in all of this but it certainly wont be the plain sailing he's implying - you've touched on this quite nicely.

Is it not appropriate here to think on what happened in 92 and look again at what do we need at the higher level of education, development and research?

Let's look at Newport, Swansea Met and Glyndwr. None of these were of traditional University status - they were predominantly technical, advanced technical of course. Newport slightly less technical but you get the point. Pre 92 they were Institutes of HE&FE and were regarded well in that field; they had a great element of FE activity. Post 92 these (plus Glamorgan) off loaded FE at a rate of knots and pushed forward with their University desires at various speeds but at what cost?

What is needed imho is a return to the Polytechnic or Institute of HE status - good, true and high quality technical and vocational places of learning. Not the more University status entities that offer 'less' to the economy than they once did - which is what we got with Glyndwr's of this world. NEWI 15-20 years ago was a far more engaging and industry focused campus as i recall it

So what is needed? Firstly, surely, we need to understand what Universities are all about and offer us. We also need to identify what communities and employers need as well as what the future of the country requires.

Re-creating Technical HE Institutes is a must (again imho) but the example you offered of the Swanseas joining-up or Glyndwr/Bangor partnership will just cloud the issues and make things worse as neither Swansea nor Bangor are of Polytech mentality - nor do they need to be. But merging FE with Tech HEIs to offer that post 16 technical and vocational education certainly makes sense. Glamorgan may well be the lead to look to in this area - provided they start to re-consider some of their 'other' taught activity.

As for the Aber, Cardiff, Bangor and Swansea traditionals then rationalisation of taught courses and research specialisms is something that should be looked at, certainly. But let's not lose sight of the brilliant work they do. Just look at Cardiff and you cannot be anything but impressed by its academic and research excellence - much of which is basically of importance to the world, not just Wales. Not that the Minister has seemingly placed much emphasis on this - cardiff has 'really' got to him by looks of it!

By interfering too much, in this rather bulldog fashion, he is in danger of alienating these excellent establishments and this will have a dire effect in the long term for all parties. They are not perfect but not as 'way-out' as he seems to think.

Bangor-Aber regional collaboration? Why not? Swansea-Aber collaboration? Why not? All-Wales collaboration? Certainly! But the mixed-bag approach of Glyndwr-Bangor or Swansea-Swansea Met please no. They do not fit and is not best for neither - let alone the country.

Ok - football's on TV and the kids are playing the plastic trumpets (no vuvuzellas on sale since Woolworths shut down..)

Mr logical

ps: in all of this I can't see a role for the University of Wales at all. Am I missing something Prof?
Anonymous said…
The best option is for four unis in Wales:

- Cardiff University
- Swansea-Bangor-Aber collaboration
- the University of Glamorgan linking in with FE and becoming a University of the Valleys (given the special status for the most deprived area of Wales)
- the technological university of Wales - UWIC, Glyndwr, Swansea Met, Trinity St david's and Newport, under the umbrella of the University of Wales

Simples really....

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