Last week, we saw one of the first indications of the continuing financial challenges facing 海角视频 higher education when the University of South Wales announced that it expects to lose £23m in income over the next year due to a catastrophic fall in the number of overseas students attending the institution.
As this column pointed out back in May 2023, this should not have come as a surprise, given the visa changes that would affect international students bringing their families. These changes were expected to disproportionately impact the two biggest overseas markets for Wales, namely India and Nigeria.
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Given the inaction by Welsh universities and the Welsh Government over this looming problem - which has now turned into a full-blown financial crisis - there now needs to be a new approach to the future of universities here in Wales. So, what should higher education do to respond to the current situation?
The trade body for the sector Universities 海角视频 (U海角视频) has recently published a report titled Opportunity, Growth, and Partnership: A Blueprint for Change, which it claims is a roadmap for how institutions can meet the evolving needs of students, the economy, and society at large. The report contains contributions from a group of leading experts and while some of the findings have been known for a while, it is useful to have them all brought together in one report so that politicians and policymakers can see the real challenges facing the sector.
For example, despite significant strides in expanding access to higher education, data shows that students from disadvantaged backgrounds continue to face barriers, both in entering university and in progressing through their careers afterward. To address this, U海角视频 has proposed an ambitious target of having 70% of the population aged 25 studying at Level 4 or above by 2040, with a particular focus on increasing participation in low-attainment areas.
However, with only 34% of Welsh 18-year-olds from all backgrounds going to university, compared to 42% in England, this will be difficult to achieve here unless significant support is made available, especially for disadvantaged students.
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One suggestion on how to achieve this is through a more unified tertiary education system and the creation of smoother pathways for students to progress through the education system without hitting “dead ends,” emphasising flexibility and lifelong learning. I have long argued for such an escalator model here in Wales, where students can enter tertiary education at sixteen years of age and progress through the educational system when they want to.
The chapter by the current director general of the CBI, Rain Newton-Smith, focuses on the importance of universities in driving local economic growth. As someone who produced a report for the European Commission on this very subject 26 years ago, it is somewhat ironic that this needs to be emphasised once again, given that we know universities can be major contributors to employment, innovation, and entrepreneurship if those leading the institutions make this a priority.
Indeed, while knowledge exchange activities account for 6% of the total economic impact of universities on the 海角视频 economy, it is only 2.5% here in Wales, the lowest of the home nations by a considerable margin. This is even more embarrassing given the hundreds of millions of pounds that have been awarded to Welsh universities from European structural funds to support this. Certainly, Welsh universities need to play a far more active role than they have in the past in ensuring collaboration with regional businesses and the public sector.
Similarly, Lord Mandelson’s chapter on research and innovation emphasises that the 海角视频 is at a critical juncture in its ambition to remain a world leader in research. The current financial pressures many universities are facing may significantly impact their ability to continue this role. While the recommendation that universities should receive more funding to support this is important, it does not address the elephant in the room namely that Wales receives only 2.6% of 海角视频 research funding.
Other recommendations include ensuring sustainable growth in international student numbers (which is unlikely in the short term), creating a more effective regulatory framework, and putting universities on a firmer financial footing by increasing public funding for teaching, linking tuition fees to inflation, and exploring efficiencies through shared services.
There are, therefore, some very pragmatic policy recommendations in this report to ensure that universities, in the words of U海角视频, remain engines of social mobility, innovation, and economic growth. However, one must wonder why it has taken the current financial crisis to deliver this agenda for change, given that many of these challenges have been known for years.
Yet, as we know, higher education is devolved, and many of the recommendations within the report apply to England only, having little relevance to Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. In fact, the situation in Wales is hardly discussed at all within the report, and while there may be similar challenges, the regulatory, financial and policy frameworks are quite different in the four home nations.
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Certainly, I expect the problems that have arisen at the University of South Wales to become the norm rather than the exception over the next few months, as other institutions reveal their own difficulties in balancing the books.
As the U海角视频 report notes, there is a need “to consider what our country needs from its universities and undertake a thorough assessment of where we are performing well, and where we could improve.” However, in this instance, that country is not the 海角视频 but Wales.
Given that the Welsh Government is responsible for higher education under its devolved powers, it needs to have its own distinct approach, otherwise, the gap between what happens here and the rest of the 海角视频 will widen, with significant consequences for the nation in many ways.