WELSH GOVERNMENT plans to cut funding for higher education which could have had a devastating impact on West Wales’s economy were not subject to assessment of their impact by Carwyn Jones’s Cabinet.
Plaid Cymru has uncovered that there was no discussion by the Welsh Cabinet of the potential impact of a 32% cut to university budgets.
The discovery came ahead of the Welsh Budget statement on Tuesday (Feb 9).
Last month, the First Minister confirmed to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood that his government had made no calculation of the job threats the budget cuts posed.
The potential impact of the proposed cuts underlined by a report prepared by Universities Wales in October 2015.
That report disclosed that around 5,100 jobs in West Wales were linked to higher education, whether directly or indirectly, and that higher education was worth in excess of £484m a year to the combined economies of Ceredigion, Carmarthen and Pembrokeshire
Ahead of the budget, Plaid Cymru called for the Government’s planned £41m cuts to university budgets to be reversed in order to protect standards of Higher Education in Wales. The proposed cut was reduced to £10m by the Welsh Government in the budget announcement.
Plaid Cymru AM Simon Thomas said: “I’m pleased that the Labour government has bowed to pressure from the Plaid Cymru and has reversed some of these cuts. It is astounding that the government was intending to make record cuts to the Higher Education budget without even carrying out an impact assessment or discussing it in cabinet meetings, and this reversal is an admission that it got it wrong.
“The Education Minister has made a mess of things, and threw our universities into panic. His refusal to acknowledge the crisis that he has caused smacks of a deep misunderstanding of the effect that such large cuts would have on our universities, and the subsequent impact on Wales’ economy. I am pleased that the Higher Education sector has been given some reassurance today that the cuts will not be as devastating as they first thought.”
Mr Thomas’s own position was itself subject to criticism from Welsh Liberal Democrat AM Eluned Parrott.
She hit out at Plaid’s education spokesperson for a supposed slur cast against vocational educational in a Plaid Cymru press conference.
Mr Thomas told journalists on Tuesday that Labour’s proposed cuts to higher education would leave Wales with “glorified polytechnics”.
According to Mr Parrott: “Simon Thomas’s attitude towards what were polytechnics is absolutely appalling. It’s entirely typical of the stigma attached to vocational and professional education, and demonstrates just why so many young people are put off taking such a route into work.”
Mr Thomas, the Mid and West Wales Assembly Member, and Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire candidate responded: “The Lib Dem spokeswoman does not seem to realise that polytechnics disappeared from Wales twenty years ago, so all our institutions are universities: vocational training is delivered by FE colleges and work placed learning.
“We are clearly committed to vocational training but we won’t slash our universities and pit one sort of education against another.”
The issue of cuts to Welsh higher education has grown particularly toxic following the Welsh Government’s decision to continue exporting £90m of Welsh Government money to English universities in order to top up tuition fee payments for Welsh students studying over the border.
The Welsh Government’s student finance arrangements have been described as ‘unsustainable’ by virtually every higher education body that responded to a call for evidence made in connection with a review of the Welsh Higher Education system headed by Professor Sir Ian Diamond. The Welsh Government is already out of step with funding postgraduate study. From September 2016, English students studying at Welsh universities will be able to access student loans to fund their studies. Welsh students studying the same courses at Welsh universities will get no such support. There is no sign that the Welsh Government is considering reviewing that policy, although The Herald was previously told by a Welsh Government spokesperson that an announcement might be made last month on how the Welsh Government would address the issue of postgraduate funding.
Huw Lewis AM, the current Welsh Education Minister, who is due to retire from the Senedd in May, has ruled out reconsidering the Welsh Government’s approach to its student finance package until after May’s Assembly election.
The findings of the Diamond Review have likewise been kicked into the long grass beyond May’s election by the Welsh Government.
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