The recurring failure of Welsh policymaking over the years is the fear of making a choice but this is totally unavoidable.
Graduates.
Since devolution in 1999, Wales has never lacked for strategies, but what it has lacked is the willingness to confront the trade-offs that sit underneath them and follow through when the evidence points to hard choices.
That is why the Welsh Government’s new paper on the future of tertiary education is so frustrating. It sets out five challenges but still feels like Wales doing what it does best namely describing the problem in detail while avoiding the decisions that would change it.
To be fair, there are positives such as treating tertiary education as a system, not a set of competing silos, but its biggest weakness is that it is still far too comfortable with ambiguity. For example, we know returns vary significantly by subject and qualification and yet funding is generally distributed evenly which is a diplomatic way of saying we are spending scarce public money as if all provision delivers the same value when it does not.
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If Wales genuinely believes in outcomes, then the honest follow-up is not “let’s consult” but “here is what we will prioritise, here is what will be reduced, and here is how we will protect opportunity while we do it.” Without that, these risks becoming a process that delays reform until the next financial shock forces rushed decisions.
The recurring failure of Welsh policymaking over the years is the fear of making a choice but this is totally unavoidable. Increasing participation will clash with reducing cost, maintaining a broad subject mix will conflict with financial viability, and protecting Welsh-medium provision will come up against shrinking capacity. This inability to choose means everyone being asked to “do more with less”, outcomes drifting, and a “not me guv” approach to accountability.
Medr, which is responsible for tertiary education in Wales, sits at the centre of this web which is fine in principle. However, the paper is strangely coy about what such leadership actually means as we have a habit in Wales of creating new bodies, rebranding oversight, and declaring “strategic alignment” without ever defining the intervention thresholds that separate oversight from public relations. If that continues, then Medr is signalling that it will be managing decline rather than leading reform.
Not surprisingly, financial sustainability is where the paper is most candid but also where it should be more ruthless. With a 25% decline in overseas students in 2024-25, it’s not surprising that the downturn in international recruitment is the most immediate cause of higher education pressures and that most Welsh institutions became too reliant on overseas fees.
But we need to call that for what it is, namely a failed business model that has been tolerated for too long because it papered over structural underfunding and avoided politically difficult conversations.
The paper also notes that underlying deficits are widespread across Welsh universities, but again the conclusion should not be another round of exploring options.
As I have noted several times during the last two years, there must be a decision: are we prepared to fund the current footprint of higher education honestly, or should it be restructured deliberately? Continuing to pretend that the status quo can be protected through efficiency savings and transformation programmes is not strategy, it is denial dressed up as governance.
The same pattern shows up in research and innovation, and the document highlights the reality that research is often cross-subsidised. It talks about specialisation and collaboration to compete for UK-wide mission funding but stops short of the obvious implication namely that Wales cannot afford every institution trying to be everything. If we want stronger research performance and genuine commercialisation, then we need concentration of capability, clear missions, and leadership willing to accept that not every campus can be a research powerhouse.
And then there is vocational education, where Wales’s economic future is arguably decided. If government is serious about productivity, vocational pathways must be built as a first-class route with employer co-ownership, clear progression from Level 2 to higher technical qualifications, consistent quality, and funding that rewards completion and progression.
The paper also nods to AI as both a risk and opportunity but is again confusing. The issue is not whether AI will affect assessment integrity (it will) but whether Welsh institutions will be AI leaders or laggards. Will AI be used to modernise delivery at scale, reduce bureaucracy, and improve learner support in measurable ways? If the paper cannot articulate that, then AI becomes another fashionable heading that produces more policy documents than productivity.
So what would make this more credible? First, the consultation should not be about “we face difficult decisions” but what decisions are now on the table: rationalising duplicated provision, consolidating back-office functions, redesigning funding so it follows outcomes, and restructuring parts of the HE footprint where sustainability is no longer realistic.
Second, it should immediately publish a five-year outcomes dashboard that focuses on completion and progression by route, FE and HE outcomes, learner satisfaction, employer outcomes, Welsh-medium capacity measures, and financial sustainability indicators. If we do not measure the right things, we will keep rewarding the wrong behaviours.
Finally, Medr’s intervention triggers should be public. If an institution is persistently deficit-making, if demand collapses, if quality falls, or if governance fails, what should happen next should be fully transparent. That is how you rebuild trust and prevent crisis management.
Yes, this paper is a step forward because it acknowledges reality, but Wales does not need another exercise in “understanding” higher education. We all know the mess that it is in and what led to that. Instead, it needs the courage to choose, and the election makes this unavoidable.
Whoever forms the next Welsh Government will inherit a system in crisis and must be prepared to say what it will stop funding, what it will consolidate, and how it will hold the system to account. If it doesn’t, then tertiary education will remain stuck in the comfortable space between ambition and delivery, and Wales will go on paying the price in productivity, opportunity, and confidence.
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