Welsh university leaders have said they are in desperate need of “stable” and “cohesive” education policies to help their institutions survive the current financial crisis.
Speaking in front of the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee, vice-chancellors from across Wales spoke about how sudden changes to immigration policy enacted under the previous government had left them with little time to react.
Rachael Langford, president and vice-chancellor of Cardiff Metropolitan University –?which is currently looking to make compulsory staff redundancies?– said that it was working “incredibly hard” to ensure that “we’re still here in 10 years’ time to serve our learners and our communities”.
However, she warned: “In order to achieve that, I do think that we need a few degrees more of policy coherence across the UK policy environment, [including] immigration policy, education policy, Treasury policy, R&D policies. One of the things that has been particularly difficult to plan for is divergence and a slight lack of coherence.”
She said it has felt like “we’re tumbling around in a washing machine at times, not quite sure which way things are going to come out. Where we can get clarity sooner and connectedness sooner, that will be helpful.”
Paul Boyle, vice-chancellor of Swansea University –?which has seen about 350 staff leave through a voluntary severance scheme?– said that the UK’s financial model was based on a system of “cross-subsidy”, but that was “reversed” when the previous government introduced bans on dependants’ visas. “That instability and volatility is exceptionally difficult to manage when so much of our system is cross-subsidised,” he said.?
“We must come up with a system which brings stability and has long-term sustainability at its heart. And the first step in that, I would argue, is surely to recognise that we have to accept that fees will rise with inflation, at least to keep the stability in the current system. But that will not be enough to put us into a position where we are all financially stable.”
A lack of policy clarity has restricted universities’ ability to envisage long-term solutions to the financial challenges, agreed Jon Timmis, vice-chancellor at Aberystwyth University, who added: “If you’ve got a stable policy landscape, it’s much easier to plan.”
He said that year-on-year tuition fee increases are “not a long-term solution” to the sector’s funding crisis, and the UK government “needs to look at what is a fit-for-purpose funding mechanism for higher education, that needs to take into account what the UK government and the devolved nations want from their higher education systems, and what are you prepared to pay for it”.
Cardiff University’s Wendy Larner, who has been?accused of “backtracking” on?her institution’s wide-ranging?job cuts plan, said: “I don’t think we’re seeing a temporary financial challenge, I think we are seeing a sector having to reinvent itself.”
“But I do think we need to understand that we are moving from an operating model that worked well, when patterns of global mobility looked the way they did and government finances looked the way they did…we are no longer in that world.”
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