Welsh Affairs Committee statement on securing the future of Welsh universities

• Welsh Affairs Committee

Following yesterday’s evidence session with leaders of all nine Welsh universities on their finances and the systemic challenges they face, the Committee says that universities need funding security and long-term policy stability. 

The Committee concluded that universities in Wales are in an acutely precarious position, as they face up to wide-ranging challenges including falling admissions among Welsh young people, declining international student numbers and tuition fees lagging far behind inflation. 

The Committee notes that this week’s Industrial Strategy acknowledged the critical role universities play in driving skills and innovation, while they also hold huge economic and civic importance to communities up and down Wales.  

Professor Wendy Larner, of Cardiff University, told the Committee that this is ‘an existential moment for universities’ and that universities ‘need to be different for the future’. Professor Paul Boyle CBE, of Swansea University, added that universities are working towards financial sustainability within a system that ‘does not lend itself to that sustainability’. 

The status quo is unsustainable. It’s therefore crucial that the UK Government acts, together with its Welsh Government partners, as part of its promised major reforms for higher education. 

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Image : House of Commons