Under A Mantra Of Austerity And Marketisation, Welsh Universities Are In Peril
By SC Cook. Cover image: Tom Davies
In the cold February wind and rain, hundreds had gathered on the steps of the Senedd in protest. They were responding to one of the most aggressive assaults on higher education Wales has ever seen.
The previous week, Cardiff University management had announced plans to axe 400 staff and cut schools and programmes in nursing, music, modern languages, ancient history, and religion. Totalling 13 percent of academic staff at the University, the initial 400 job losses will be followed by more cuts to administrative and support staff later this year. This is the most severe announcement of cuts for the sector in Wales, but across the whole of the UK university bosses are drawing up plans for a new era of austerity in higher education.
In Cardiff, university workers had been invited to a series of briefings in which the alarming scale and depth of the proposed restructure had been outlined to them. Many were left shell-shocked and in tears at the sudden announcement, fearing for their jobs, their students, and the future of the university itself.
In the case of nursing, all 78 academic staff would lose their jobs under the proposals as the department would cease to exist. There has been outcry at the decision to sack academics and shut prestigious schools for music and humanities, and the overall plans have been met with fierce resistance from workers and students alike. Music cuts would silence Wales as the “land of the song”, one former student said, “the city will go quiet, it will be apocalyptic”. Musical protests have been held on campus and a petition to save the department quickly amassed over 20,000 signatures.
A week after the initial announcement, over 350 workers packed into a meeting held by their union, the University and College Union (UCU), and overwhelmingly passed a vote of no confidence in the Vice Chancellor, Prof Wendy Larner, and the University’s Executive Board (UEB).
The union has also announced a ballot for industrial action, up to and including strikes and a marking boycott. “The proposals made by UEB threaten the livelihood of hundreds of colleagues, the reputation of our university, and our place in Welsh society,” the no confidence motion read.
“We are aware that the university has sufficient reserves, including liquid reserves, to guarantee no compulsory redundancies and have consistently urged them to use this money to enact a more gradual, less damaging recovery.”
The motion was passed with 353 votes in favour and just 3 against, in what was the biggest union meeting anyone could remember at Cardiff university. Ahead of the vote, Cardiff UCU President Dr Joey Whitfield labelled the cuts “cruel and unnecessary” and a “case study in incompetent governance.” He said the move would have a profound impact student’s wellbeing, the university’s relations with the NHS as well as the economic and cultural life of Wales as a whole.
Cardiff is not the only university to announce dramatic cutbacks as a crisis grips the sector with a drop off in both foreign and domestic student applications. This has been blamed on a broken financial model, the neoliberalisation of higher education, huge tuition fees and anti-migrant policies, such as preventing Masters students from bringing family members to the UK.
This week, hot on the heels of Cardiff, Bangor University announced 200 job cuts and the University of South Wales said 90 posts could be axed. Swansea University has already cut 342 jobs in the past 18 months, and has now said it needs to save another £30 million. Aberystwyth University has also pushed through job losses and has recently posted an £8.1m deficit, saying the situation “will get worse before it gets better.”
The total shortfall across Wales is thought to be around £70 million.
Following the vocal rally at the Senedd, where unions including UCU, RCN, UNISON, Unite and GMB called for state intervention, an announcement on Tuesday confirmed that universities in Wales would receive a £19 million cash injection from the Welsh Government. The news was welcomed by Cardiff UCU, who said that it made the cuts at Cardiff even harder to justify.
“This will put more pressure on Cardiff University’s management to row back on their brutal and unnecessary cuts, and institute the more gradual, humane recovery plan we’ve argued for all along,” a spokesperson for the union said. They urged the Welsh Government to make any new funds conditional upon governance reform, ensuring no compulsory redundancies are made and protecting participation in Welsh Universities.
Days later the Minister for Higher Education, Vikki Howells, told the university Vice Chancellor she should “consider all options” to stop job cuts, including using its financial reserves. But the threat facing the sector is existential in many people’s eyes, and the Welsh and UK Government has to do more to intervene before it’s too late.
Pressure has also grown on the Cardiff University Vice Chancellor and the UEB following leaks, first reported in Wales Online, showing Wendy Larner admitting that she could have acted to address the University’s financial deficit earlier, and that she ignored warnings from University Council to act sooner. Prof Larner responded by saying the university was being “brave” and making “difficult decisions”.
Senior managers at Cardiff insist that huge, disruptive cuts are needed to balance the books for what they say is a deficit of £31 million, but Cardiff UCU say that independent expert financial analysis disputes this narrative.
At the root of the cuts is a self-imposed plan to chase a 12% surplus on the budget. But the union argues that this target is wholly unnecessary, and that the institution is currently sitting on £188 million in cash reserves. They say the ambitious surplus target prioritises the health of the University’s bank account “for its own sake, instead of prioritising the health of the organisation and the lives of its staff.” The cuts will also radically alter what higher education could look like in Wales as a whole.
Plans for a post-cuts Cardiff University include raising tariffs to offer fewer spaces to UK “home” students, further prioritising attracting high fee-paying international students, and chasing league table rankings in order to become a smaller, more elite institution with what it calls “higher quality cohorts” of students. One of the clearest examples of what the impact of this elite institution might look like for the rest of society has come through the decision to dismantle the entire school of nursing.
The Royal College of Nursing has raised the alarm about the plans which will threaten the supply of trained nurses into the largest health boards in Wales. Wales is already facing a severe nursing shortage, with thousands of vacancies placing immense pressure on an already overstretched workforce. “The proposed closure of such a prestigious institution’s nursing programme will have a significant impact on the future of nursing in Wales,” the RCN says, adding that the crisis of ‘corridor care’ will only get worse if the cuts go through.
“They [nursing academics] produce highly skilled, compassionate nurses who have gone on to serve communities locally and across Wales.” The RCN held its own protest with students and workers outside the Cardiff University School of Nursing after the planned closure was announced. One student representative for nursing told Nursing Times that they had been contacted by hundreds of worried students, unsure as to whether they should transfer to a different university entirely for the remainder of their course.
Launching the petition to save the music department, a former student also places the cuts in the wider context of a crisis for the arts across Wales. “This awful decision is once again a way to cut the arts in Wales and will have a lasting impact on the arts scene throughout the UK,” they write. Overall, the cuts will fuel an already-serious crisis of participation in Welsh Higher Education.
Cardiff UCU Media Spokesperson Dr Andy Williams summed up the problems with the plans:
“The University’s cruel and unnecessary cuts plans are dripping with unexamined prejudice which will end up further shutting working class and ethnic minority young people out of Universities in Wales. They say they want to turn Cardiff University into a smaller, more agile institution but seem oblivious to the fact that deprioritising home students, and axing courses like nursing, will just return us to the bad old days when University was for the privileged elite.”
Further protests are planned in the near future. This coming Saturday from midday, students, workers and their supporters will leave the university Chemistry Building. The protest is being organised by the Committee of Concerned Musicians, on behalf of Cardiff University Music Students and Alumni.
The committee released a statement saying it was ‘outraged’ by the proposal and stood in solidarity with other university departments now under threat. The statement continues: “To eliminate the humanities from Cardiff University sends a message to the wider world, that they are not as important. So we will send one back: the “Land of Song” needs music, art and culture now more than ever.”
A statement from Cardiff University can be found here.
