Monday, February 03, 2025
It is time for the Welsh Government to intervene on university cuts?
The paper says that nearly one in four leading UK universities are slashing staff numbers and cutting budgets, with up to 10,000 redundancies or job losses, bringing calls for action to avoid damaging the sector’s international standing.
They add that in the past week four universities, including two members of the research-intensive Russell Group of universities, have announced a combined 1,000 job losses in response to budget shortfalls, while about 90 universities are currently restructuring alongside compulsory and voluntary redundancy schemes to lower their wage bills.
The paper features the decision by Cardiff University to axe its highly rated nursing courses as well as job losses in humanities subjects:
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has sounded the alarm that the financial crisis is “engulfing” nursing courses. A majority of nurse-lecturers and other higher education nursing staff across the UK reported redundancies and recruitment freezes, when there are more than 40,000 vacancies in the sector.
Helen Whyley, the executive director of RCN Wales, said she was “very concerned” by Cardiff’s proposals.
She said: “Its school of nursing has a longstanding reputation for excellence, producing highly skilled, compassionate nurses who have gone on to serve communities locally and across Wales.
“This decision has the potential to threaten the pipeline of registered nurses into the largest health board in Wales and undermines efforts to address the critical staffing crisis in the NHS and social care.”
While universities such as Durham and Cardiff are only now announcing job losses, others have undergone constant cost-cutting and restructuring for the past three years as rising costs and declining tuition fee income from domestic students have eroded budgets.
One vice-chancellor said the “drip-drip” nature of the cuts meant they had largely passed under the public’s radar.
“If the BBC or John Lewis was cutting 5,000 or 6,000 jobs, we’d hear all about it but what we’re seeing in universities isn’t being noticed,” they said.
Highlighting the lack of fuss being made about the loss of these courses is absolutely right. It is something that Welsh journalist Will Hayward is particularly scathing about in his latest newsletter.
He says that the proposed 400 job cuts at Cardiff Uni have been covered extensively but what hasn’t got the attention it deserves is the Welsh Government’s attempt to abdicate responsibility over this:
Let’s just focus on the proposed removal of the nursing course (though loss in the other areas is also clearly devastating for Wales).
Here are some numbers:
There are 800 to 1,000 students in the Cardiff Uni nursing school.
There are 2,000 nursing vacancies in Wales.
The Cardiff course is the #1 ranked nursing course in Wales and #5 in the whole of the UK.
One of the challenges Welsh health boards face is attracting staff to come and work in Wales. This is a particular issue in rural Wales and at Betsi Cadwaladr in the North. When people study in a place, there is a pretty decent chance they will stick around after university.
I know six people who studied nursing at Cardiff. Four of them were from England. 10 years on from graduating, five of the six are still working in the Welsh NHS.
You can make a strong argument that a shortage in a profession as vital as nursing is a national security threat. Especially given our aging population, long waiting lists and the ever present threat of pandemics.
Given that it is devolved, it begs the question what has been the Welsh Government's response to this crisis in higher education? Well it has been two fold:
To start with they were seemingly utterly blindsided by it despite other Welsh unis making redundancies and repeated warnings about the perilous state of HE institutions by economists like Professor Dylan Jones-Evans.
Once the proposed cuts were announced they did everything they could to distance themselves from the problem and deflect responsibility for solving it.
Barely anyone has come forward for an interview on the issue and when the minister for further and higher education, Vikki Howells, appeared in the Senedd it was an exhibition of the finest buck passing.
Over and over again she responded to questions saying that “universities are autonomous of the Government”.
That’s true but as BBC journo James Williams pointed out on his podcast, “so is Tata Steel in Port Talbot”, and yet the Welsh Government never missed a second telling the UK Government that they needed to intervene there (until of course Labour were in charge of the UK Government and then the plan made by the Tories was apparently good enough).
He quotes the response by Vikki Howells to questions in which she says:
“I'd like to place on record in this Chamber this afternoon that we need to see a review of how the HE sector is funded across the UK as a whole.
“I understand that some work is ongoing in the UK Government, and I expect the Welsh Government to have the opportunity to contribute to this review so that any findings are relevant to the needs of Wales, which will of course always be my primary concern.”
Oh for crying out loud. These jobs and vital training places are at risk of going right now. The UK Government clearly has no appetite for tackling the problems for unis in England let alone Wales. To call for that review by someone else and think that it is enough is a dereliction of duty. They are the custodians of Wales, they must do more.
Now don’t get me wrong, in an ideal world, any review of HE would indeed cover England and Wales because HE institutions on both sides of the border are facing similar issues like changes to visa rules, the impact of Brexit and the student finances rules set in London. Not to mention the fact they are very interconnected.
But this isn’t an ideal world and Welsh Labour clearly have next to no influence with their Westminster colleagues to drive the changes
Therefore it is the duty of the Welsh Labour Government to step up and do all they can to help the sector in Wales. Barely a day goes by when Welsh Labour doesn’t call for more powers to be devolved, but when there is an issue in an area which is already devolved they call on the UK Government to do more. It is infuriating.
Finally, it is important to note that though Cardiff grabs the headlines, almost every uni in Wales is facing the same challenges. This is a Wales issue, not a Cardiff issue.
One of the big failures of devolution in my view is the inability of ministers to carry out effective workforce planning around the health service. The shortage of nurses is a symptom of that. Their failure to secure this vital course is just more of the same. an abrogation of responsibility by the Welsh government.
