For too long Welsh higher education has behaved as though the market around it has not fundamentally changed,
The Owain Glyndwr statue in Corwen .(Image: Ian Cooper )
I was the first in my family to go to university, but I was not the first to understand what education could mean.
My great-grandfather, a quarryman in Gwynedd, was among those who gave what little they could to help establish the University College of North Wales in Bangor in the nineteenth century. Those contributions mattered because they came from people who had very little but believed higher education was worth building for future generations.
That is why the crisis now facing Welsh universities is important, as this is not simply a story about deficits, redundancies and falling student numbers. It is about whether Wales is prepared to let one of its most important national assets drift into decline.
For too long, Welsh higher education has behaved as though the market around it has not fundamentally changed, but students are now more mobile, more selective and more exposed to a competitive UK-wide system than ever before. Welsh universities are not mainly competing with each other, they are competing with powerful English institutions, major city brands and a student market that is making harder judgments about value, employability and experience.
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Yet Wales has never developed a convincing answer to that challenge, and “Study in Wales” should have become a serious national proposition, built around quality, affordability, community and opportunity. Instead, it has too often felt like a slogan rather than a strategy, and too many institutions have looked and sounded alike, chasing similar students with similar offers.
The deeper problem is not simply that some Welsh students leave Wales, it is that the system has become increasingly dependent on students from elsewhere while the number of Welsh-domiciled students staying in Wales has fallen. That leaves universities more exposed to changes in markets they cannot control.
That vulnerability is clearest in the finances and across the sector – deficits have widened, staff cuts have deepened, and fragility has become impossible to ignore. This is not the problem of a single badly managed institution, and while Welsh universities operate in a difficult UK environment, many also lack the scale and resilience of larger competitors elsewhere.
International students are not the problem as they bring enormous academic, cultural and economic value. The problem is overdependence, and when international recruitment becomes the key support holding up an institution, rather than one part of a balanced model, the risks become obvious.
But this is not just about money, it is also about people. The loss of hundreds of posts across the Welsh university sector is not merely a spreadsheet adjustment. It is the loss of expertise, loyalty and institutional memory. More troubling still is how many staff seem to have been treated during restructuring, and too often, one hears the same themes: poor communication, shallow consultation and a lack of dignity. Universities are meant to embody learning, public service and opportunity, and if they begin treating their own people as disposable, they corrode the values they claim to uphold.
That brings us to governance as good governance is not about committees and paperwork. It is about asking difficult questions early enough to matter. Is student demand really there? Is the subject mix sustainable? Is the capital programme affordable? Is the institution genuinely clear about its mission? Too often in Wales, those questions do not appear to have been asked hard enough.
But the Welsh Government must also confront its own role as universities have too often been treated in Cardiff Bay as a financial pressure to be contained rather than as part of Wales’s productive infrastructure. In policy terms, higher education has been repeatedly downplayed, expected to absorb financial pressures while ministers avoid confronting the scale of the challenge.
That is a serious mistake because universities matter well beyond their campuses. They train nurses, teachers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and public servants on whom Wales relies. They support local jobs, sustain city and town centre economies, attract investment, and help keep talented young people in the country. They are not just education providers but are anchor institutions in the true sense, and if universities weaken, the damage impacts local economies, public services, and national confidence.
The same is true of research, and for too long, Wales has failed to secure anything like its fair share of UK research funding. That matters because research is not an optional extra, it is central to long-term economic growth, innovation and national capacity. If Wales continues to receive far too small a share of UK research and development funding while other parts of the country pull further ahead, we should not be surprised when the gap widens in productivity, commercialisation and high-value employment.
This is not just a university problem but a national economic problem, and every extra pound of research funding helps build laboratories, support skilled jobs, develop new technologies, attract private investment and create spin-out businesses. When Wales loses out, the whole country loses out, and a nation that does not fight for its fair share of research funding is quietly accepting a smaller future.
The good news is that Wales still has outstanding staff, talented students and institutions of real importance, but strengths alone are not enough. Without honesty, reform and a much clearer sense of national purpose, the sector will simply continue to lurch from one crisis to the next.
And in truth, this is not a new aspiration.
More than six centuries ago, when Owain Glyndwr outlined his vision for an independent Wales in the Pennal Letter of 1406, establishing two universities, one in the north and one in the south, was among his chief priorities. He understood then what we must remember now namely that higher education is not secondary to Wales but is central to its future.
The task, then, is not merely to save universities, but to renew and revitalise the higher education system that remains vital to our country’s future. That is the challenge, and that is the opportunity.
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