Uni View column – October 2024
Last year, newly arrived in Wales as the Vice Chancellor of Cardiff University, I wrote in this column that the university sector was at an existential moment with an unsustainable financial context.
Despite a small but welcome increase in tuition fees in Wales, very little has changed over the last 12 months. Public finances remain tight and other spending areas, understandably, remain a higher priority for our politicians.
There have been many stories in the news about universities grappling with financial pressures and emerging deficits with most – if not all – adopting some form of measures to mitigate. Cardiff is one of them: we have just completed a round of voluntary severance.
I recently wrote to all staff to say that we are facing a £30m operating deficit for the 23/24 financial year. Had we not taken action mid-year, that deficit would have been far worse.
While we are not in immediate financial difficulty – we have reserves that will cushion us in the short term - we cannot continue to use these reserves to pay for operating costs.
In short, we need to return to the point where our costs are lower than our income - and we are trying to do so within a broken funding system.
That existential moment I referred to earlier prompted us at Cardiff to ask ourselves ‘what kind of university do we want to be, and for what kind of future? That participatory process - Y Sgwrs Fawr – The Big Conversation - included input from all of our stakeholders, and the result is our new strategy - Our Future, Together.
Building on our history, values, strengths, resources, and networks, and drawing on our academic and professional expertise, we have developed our direction of travel, together, and charted our path to 2035.
Practically, it means change. Change that is focused on delivering social mobility and economic development for Cardiff, Wales and the world.
It means streamlining governance processes, reducing workload, bureaucracy and duplication, and focusing on outcomes.
It means disinvesting to reinvest in the areas and new activities detailed in our strategy. This means rethinking our estate to ensure that we have greener, better space that is used to its full potential.
It means being ambitious for Cardiff and for Wales, being among the very best universities, delivering research and education on the grand challenges of our age, and futureproofing our graduates for life and work in a changing and uncertain world.
Finally, it means rethinking our activity and committing to new initiatives. This includes new transnational activity, rethinking our global partnership to be more equitable and reciprocal and committing to a University-wide model for flexible lifelong learning.
Twelve months ago, I said we’d need to make tough decisions about stopping or limiting some activities, changing the way we work and cutting out tasks that don’t add value.
This work has begun, guided by our new strategy which shapes our future direction.
The path ahead will not always be straightforward – there will be difficult decisions to be made, and the coming year is likely to be challenging - but we have the talent and the resilience to move the University forwards to greater success and an even more meaningful contribution to Wales, the UK and the wider world.
Professor Wendy Larner
Vice-Chancellor, Cardiff University