National Assembly for Wales

Welcome to today's meeting of the Children, Young People and Education Committee. The public items of this meeting are being broadcast live on Senedd.tv. The Record of Proceedings will be published as usual. The meeting is bilingual, and simultaneous translation from Welsh to English is available. Apologies have been received from Carolyn Thomas and Joel James. Mike Hedges is subbing for Carolyn Thomas this morning. Welcome, Mike. Are there any declarations of interest from Members? I can see there are not.

So, we'll move on now to agenda item 2, which is the evidence session on issues facing the higher education sector. Would you like to introduce yourselves, please? And we've agreed for you to make a short statement. Thank you.

I'm Wendy Larner. I'm the vice-chancellor of Cardiff University.

Chair of Cardiff University council, and university graduate.

Okay. Thank you. And would you like to make the statement that we've agreed to?

Thank you very much, Chair. Well, diolch yn fawr for the invitation to join you this morning and the opportunity to give you a brief update. You've met my colleague Mr Pat Younge, who, in addition to being chair of Cardiff University council, is an alumni of university college Cardiff.

You know, from the evidence that Medr and my fellow vice-chancellors have already shared with this committee, that it is an enormously challenging time for the university sector not just here in Wales, but in the United Kingdom and, indeed, globally. We're facing increasing costs, annual pay increases, rising utility bills, most recently a £7 million increase in national insurance, and, at the same time, policy changes and geopolitical trends mean a steep decline in the number of international students coming to our universities. The home tuition fee no longer covers the cost of teaching these students, and while it was very welcome, the recent fee increase only covers about half of that national insurance increase I just mentioned.Our research is hugely important to Wales and the world, but we also heavily subsidise it.

Now, despite this challenging context, we remain very positive and optimistic about our university. We know how important Cardiff University is to our city, to Wales and beyond. This is the context in which we launched the Academic Futures project—a project that aims to realise our academic and financial sustainability so we can continue to meet the needs of current and future generations. The world around us is changing fast. Universities have traditionally not been very good at responding to the environment around them. We know we need to be more agile, better at responding to the needs of society, ensuring our students have the life skills they need to adapt and flex, delivering education to a wider range of people, particularly those who’ve been excluded from education before. We want to be a place where we can use our academic heft to address economic and social challenges, and where students come back to reskill, recharge, change direction or simply to learn for learning's sake.

When we released the Academic Futures document at the beginning of February, we said it was the beginning of a genuine consultation. We knew that some of the proposals in that document would change, and I'm pleased that that has indeed been the case. Just on Monday, we released our final plans to our staff and students. We plan to retain nursing, music and modern languages at Cardiff, albeit with smaller cohorts and new delivery models. Unfortunately, having considered the case very carefully, we plan to cease named degrees in ancient history, and religion and theology. These are not decisions we have taken lightly. We are committed to working with those colleagues to support them as best we can.

As committee members already know, our initial target for reduction in academic staff full-time equivalent was 400. Acceptance of aspects of alternative proposals that have come forward from the university with related income, and our new activity in Kazakhstan, has seen this target reduced to 220 FTE. To date, 151 academic staff FTE have left the university voluntarily. This leaves a final reduction of 69 FTE to be delivered by 2029-30, so over time. Compulsory redundancies are always our last resort, so we will continue to seek this reduction through voluntary departures and redeployment opportunities.

I think it's important to appreciate that, even with those changes, we will remain one of the UK's largest universities, returning to approximately the size we were in 2019. We will also continue to be research intensive, ensuring that Wales has a Russell Group university it can be proud of. And of course we're committed to teaching all students currently enrolled, and indeed those who will join us in September, until they graduate from our university.

I do not underestimate the effect that this process has had on our staff. Change is always difficult. Cardiff has traditionally experienced very low levels of change relative to many other universities. I know the project has created distress and worry, and a certain amount of shock. These are very normal reactions—they are understandable. We have worked very hard to ensure that well-being and mental health support has been available throughout this process for all colleagues, not just those in scope, and we've also been working hard to improve support for well-being in partnership with our trade unions.

Finally, alongside the Academic Futures project, we've been working hard on new initiatives, initiatives that will widen access to learning for all types of students, and that will open new revenue streams for us. We're launching a new flexible lifelong learning institute, allowing students to access learning in ways that best work around their lifestyles. We've had significant early success in launching transnational education initiatives with the support of the UK Government and British Council. We are restructuring our student support services to make sure these are delivered much closer to our students, including mental health support. And then, finally, we are undertaking work to extend our reach and reputation, both locally and globally, with an enhanced commitment to the communities that surround us.

There is much to do, but, again, we're very happy to be with you this morning, and welcome the opportunity to answer your questions. Diolch.

Thank you. Thank you for that. I'm really conscious of time, so now we'll move quickly to Cefin Campbell, please. 

Well, bore da, and thank you very much indeed for coming in this morning to meet us. The university has backtracked on a number of proposals you announced back in January—nursing, music, modern languages, and the number of compulsory redundancies that you demanded at that time. On reflection, was it wise to approach it in the way you did, with the resulting damage to staff morale, which you’ve acknowledged already, to goodwill, to trust, and the reputational damage done to the university, not only here in Cardiff and Wales, but internationally? So, was it wise, on reflection, that you did this back in January?

So, we were very clear in January that it was a consultation and that there would be genuine engagement around the proposals that we put on the table in January. I do understand that, despite our best efforts to help both the university and our stakeholders understand how challenging the moment was for us, the scale of that announcement came as a shock. We’ve recently had a joint Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service-facilitated seminar that brought together the senior leaders from the university and the senior leaders from the union to discuss approaches to restructuring and redundancies more generally. And I for one found that a very helpful session. It confirmed that, difficult as it has been, we have taken the right approach. We did need to do what we have done in order to identify those areas of the university that were in scope. I’m delighted by the quality of the alternative proposals that came up from our community. That is why we have been able to change quite significantly those initial plans. There is still work to do.

The reputational implications of this—. We know there has been very extensive discussion in Wales—rightly; we are Wales’s Russell Group university. We’ve had some interesting indicators just in the last couple of weeks. In the Complete University Guide, we’ve actually gone up five places. This is the first of the domestic league tables. It's still embargoed, but, again, good news around one of the key international league tables.

I know we’ve got work to do now, as we come out the other end of this, but our intention all the way through has been to ensure that Cardiff University is successful for the future, hard as it’s been to do the work to deliver that.

Can I just add briefly? I was at Cardiff University when it went bust in 1987. We don’t have a God-given right to exist; we do have to live within our means. And this has been a difficult exercise. Before Wendy joined us, we ran two rounds of voluntary severance. We didn’t get the take-up that we needed there to avoid going into the sort of programme that we’ve gone into. And I’ve read the evidence of all the other Welsh universities, and I know all the other chairs in Wales, and I think you know that this is a deep structural problem. If this was just Cardiff University going through this, I think that there is a conversation. But Edinburgh University are trying to take out £140 million; Newcastle, Sheffield, Liverpool, Durham—these are Russell Group universities, all facing the same situation we do.

I’ve done exercises like this elsewhere. There is no easy way to tell 100, 200, 400 people that they are at risk of redundancy. It is a difficult exercise. But, sometimes, especially if you love something—and I love Cardiff University—you have to give people difficult messages, and this was one of them.

Well, thank you for that. Back in January, and I’m quoting here from the consultation, you said that these measures do

'not completely close our financial gap but they are an important step towards financial sustainability'.

But given that you backtracked on so many of those initial proposals, what does this now mean for the financial position of the university?

So, the staff changes to date will save us around about £20 million a year. You'll remember that last year we had a £31 million operating deficit. We made the decision—rightly; we're a university and things academic come first—to have that conversation, that really important conversation, about our academic future. What will our academic footprint look like for the future? That's the work that we've been doing through this process, and the plans that will go to council next week are the outcome of that process. There is then work to do to ensure that our professional services, and, indeed, our estate, align with the plans we've made for our academic future. So, for example, within that, there is a proposed reduction in the number of academic schools. We want to be really clear about our areas of excellence in the university and build around those and prioritise our resources accordingly. That will have implications for our professional staff. Our estate—. We have a very large and, actually, post COVID, increasingly underutilised estate. We do need to think hard about how to bring vibrancy back to our estate. Our strategy is very clear about the need for a smaller, greener estate. So, this is all ongoing work to be done. As I said in my opening comments, we've already begun to think about that work in relation to our student services, for example, but there is still work to be done. But we now have clarity about our academic direction of travel. It was really important for us that that came first. Other universities have just salami-sliced. That is not strategic. That does not deliver the university we need for a successful future, not just for us, but for Cardiff and Wales.

Also, use of the word 'backtrack'—. If you're having a genuine consultation, then you would expect, and I actually said to the university, 'I'd be very surprised if where we end up is where we started.' It has been a genuine consultation, and so there will be changes. The final document hasn't come to council yet—we will see it at our meeting next week—but I expect that, where there has been a change in plan, there is income that goes with it, and council will be assessing the plan on that basis.

But I believe your senate yesterday refused the proposals. Am I right?

Senate has an advisory role in this process. So, we heard very eloquently at senate, particularly from heads of school with disciplines that are those disciplines that the plans propose we disinvest from, and, quite understandably, Senate colleagues did not recommend those changes to council. They offered all sorts of good advice. We will present that advice to council, along with the papers that go to council around this item. That is the process here.

Can I just go back to your financial position that you stated back in January? You set your targets in terms of cutting schools and making redundancies based on that financial position in January. So, I'll use the word 'backtracking' again, because we all understand what that means. Now that you've changed those targets on reflection, what has changed in your financial position that allowed you to do that? I am unclear on what you mean, because you did just tell me that you know what the academic direction of travel is, you know how you're going to change the estate, but what are the financial implications that make things different now to what they were in January, having failed to meet the initial proposals?

So, let me give you three examples that might help here. Medicinal chemistry was identified in the consultation document as a programme that we might look to move and rethink. One of the alternative proposals that came forward from our school of chemistry had a plan for medicinal chemistry that required rethinking that programme and delivering it without additional staff costs. So, we were able to meet the financial challenge in that school because of an alternative proposal that came forward around delivery that, in effect, was much more effective than our current delivery mode.

A second example: the school of maths received a very significant external grant, maths for future generations—a lovely initiative—that again has meant that our school of maths was able to meet the targets that we had set for them. So, again, we were able to take them out of scope.

A third example, and this is why Kazakhstan is really important—Natasha and I have talked about Kazakhstan previously—through the process, we did sign the legal agreement that will see us set up our activities in Kazakhstan from September. There's significant interest. I'll be happy to talk about that in due course. But, of course, we need staff, staff who are actually really excited about this opportunity, to deliver those programmes.

So, just three examples, but things continued to shift and change, rightly, through the consultation process because of those alternative proposals. That's why that engagement has been so important through this. So, we've been able to meet our financial targets in ways that allowed us to reduce the number of people who had remained in scope. We anticipate that we will continue to do that, but that is ongoing work that we will continue to do.

So, what you're telling the committee this morning is that the three examples, and others that we haven't heard of—. But you feel confident that that financial gap that you identified back in January will now be closed, that you're on a firm financial footing. Is that what you're telling us?

Well, the financial headwinds continue to blow strongly—you know that. The recent immigration White Paper, for example, just fills me with foreboding. The challenges around international students coming to the UK are very real. Many universities, us included, have seen a very significant drop-off in applications and, indeed, enrolments. In part, this is about shifts in the policy settings in Westminster, but in part it's also about wider geopolitical shifts, where international students who might once have come to the UK now have more opportunities available to them. The Chinese students, for example, who've been very important historically, not just for the UK, but for the English-speaking countries, Australasia and North America included—. China now does very effective PGT programmes in China, delivered in English, and there is now transnational education from China in south-east Asia, again being delivered in English. Students are staying in that part of the world rather than coming to join us. So, it's one example, but the headwinds remain very, very strong. We are working really hard. We absolutely have to be able to live within our means. We're very clear about that.

Can I just bring Vaughan in here, please, for a second?

Just talking about the senate, I'm not sure that everyone understands the university governance structure and the role of the council and senate, and who is on the senate as well. I have been on a university senate and the University of Wales, but it might be helpful just to have a note on who those people are and the various voices in the senate, because I think it's easier then to understand why people in the senate wouldn't necessarily disagree with someone making a case to save their job in the same meeting, whereas a university council has a different role. But it might be helpful just to have a note on that to help with the committee's own conclusion. It'll be the same basic structure for other universities as well.

So, I’ll talk about the senate, and then I'll pass to Pat. So, the senate is our academic body, comprising our heads of schools and representatives from our academic community. And you're quite right that it makes sense that a community who are seeing their schools restructured and, in some cases, seeing their jobs being discussed and their disciplines being discussed did not feel they could recommend to council the kinds of changes that are in the final plan. But, to repeat my earlier point, their role is to recommend and provide advice, and my senate colleagues did that very, very effectively yesterday afternoon. So, I am comfortable with the advice they will provide to council. But, Pat, the council.

The council will take that advice, but we have a whole-of-university look. I think one of the things that the committee should consider is that to take cost out of university is actually a four-year process. Because we have to, rightly, teach out all of those people who are on our courses, decisions taken today don't really fully land on the bottom line for another four years. And I think you will know as a committee—. You've been looking at demographic shifts that we're going through and the decline in the number of 18-year-olds that we will face by 2030. So, if you're not taking decisions now about your shape and size four years from now, you're already behind the curve. So, these are decisions that are being taken not just for now but for the long term.

Okay, thank you. Before we go back to Cefin, I'd like to welcome our visitors in the public gallery. Back to Cefin, please.

Yes. My final question in this part is around your financial reserves. You've said on many occasions that they're not sustainable as a solution, because you can only use those once, but could you explain to us to what extent—? You've leant on those reserves to maintain the current position, but, moving forward, how much of those reserves do you foresee having to use and what effect will that have on your overall situation, moving forward?

Okay. So, in terms of our reserves, I don't know whether you've received the advice that we got from Moody's. If you've not, we can certainly provide you with that. But, the university, we are lucky—we are in the fortunate position that we have reserves. I'll put them into two groups: we have about £140 million of reserves built up over the last 130 years. We try to keep £100 million of that on standby, day-to-day cash. We have £41 million beyond that. We also have, obviously, our endowments, and we have a small amount of money that we're investing in ongoing repairs and maintenance projects on the campus. That's our cash reserve. And of that £141 million, we have used the reserves in the last two years to cover deficits without moving towards redundancy, using all sorts of other methods to try and contain costs. But we've used the reserves last year and the year before to cover deficits. We're going to use that reserve this year as well, both to cover the deficit and the necessary restructuring costs. We believe that, by the end of this process, we will probably have used about 45 per cent of our total historic reserve.

Now, we have a separate set of money, which is called the bond money. We raised £400 million through a bond at 3 per cent interest back in 2017. We spent about £160 million [correction: £260 million] of that on buildings: the translational research hub, the social science research park building, Abacws, the mathematics and computer science building, and the centre for student life. Those buildings have helped power our research and our teaching and provide incredible facilities for our students.

Now, we still have £140 million of that bond money unspent. Now, we pay interest on the bond and we pay that interest out of our ongoing expenses, but there's been demand that we spend that money covering day-to-day deficits. Council has said, 'No, that money is not to be spent on that. We pay interest on that money, and that money has to be spent on projects that are going to deliver a return to justify the investment.' If you look at the state of the university at the moment, the No. 1 reason students give for not coming to Cardiff University are the state of our halls of residence. We need to spend about £300 million to 400 million just on halls of residence, updating them, maintaining them and building more capacity, because, Cardiff, as you know, is a very difficult city in terms of student accommodation.

We need to digitise a lot of our activity. We need to spend money on things like marketing. These have been the soft cuts that have been made over time, which have actually served to weaken our position. We have a £100 million maintenance backlog, which means our staff are working in quite appalling conditions. We have a commitment to net-zero capital investments, which probably amount to another £100 million. So, that £140 million—which I know the union have fixated on and said, 'Spend it, spend it, spend it'—that money is money to invest in the future of the university, and we're very lucky to have it and we need to spend it wisely. The rest of the university, the rest of the time, we need to learn to live much more within our means, because we haven't been, and that's a very difficult message, but it's necessary.

Thank you. If you could provide the committee with the advice note that you mentioned.

From Moody's, yes.

Yes, please, if you could.

Moody's basically said that our position was weak relative to our peers, but we were well-capitalised and we have a plan in terms of Academic Futures and the overall strategy that should see us strengthen our position if we manage to execute it.

They were very clear that executing our restructuring plan was really important. We heard the advice loud and clear.

Okay. It would be useful if you—

We'll certainly—. Yes, absolutely.

Thank you. Thank you. We'll move on now to questions from Natasha, please.

Thank you so much. I have got an area of questioning, but I just wanted to touch upon something that you said. You used a line that I really like, which is, 'We need to live within our means.' So, in what ways have you not been living within your means, to have issues at the moment?

Well, the cost of teaching students has been greater than the income that we've received in fees. We've had areas of growth and then, when the growth has ceased, we haven't reduced the headcount in some of those areas.

I would also say, when I took on this role three years ago, four years ago—it feels like a lifetime, but three or four years ago—I'd already spent eight years as a governor at another institution. I said in my opening remarks to the university that universities do not have a viable business model. We have a tuition fee set at £9,000, which hadn't changed since 2011, so had already lost 40 per cent, maybe 50 per cent, of its value. In Wales, the fee was stuck at £9,000, whereas, in the rest of the UK, it was £9,250 from 2017, and that sounds like a small amount of money, but, between 2017 and 2024, Cardiff University lost £24 million, compared to our rivals just across the water who are doing the same thing, and I know other universities have referred to that in their evidence as well.

Research: we're a research-intensive university, but I think you know that the income you get from your research doesn't cover your costs, and probably it's about a 20 per cent to 25 per cent shortfall in terms of what research funding covers. Now, when you do £200 million a year of research, which is what we're doing this year, that's £40 million to £50 million you have to find from other places just to do the research that you're committed to. On top of that we have net zero; we have our staff, who expect their package to, basically, try and keep up with inflation; we have students who want us to protect them from the ravages of inflation. When the Ukraine war happened, our cost of energy nearly doubled, and cost us an extra £10 million. And we've managed to keep going—and this speaks to the fortitude of our staff—we've managed to keep going through the additional surplus income from international students.

The chairs of the Welsh universities actually wrote to the education Minister in 2023 and said that the system is at a tipping point. And we met with the Minister, we had a number of meetings with the Minister, and we talked about a range of things, but, if you don't address the fundamentals, all of the Welsh universities will be going through this year on year on year, because income is not rising and expense inevitably rises. 

Thank you very much for answering the question. I will move on to my area of questioning now that I wanted to focus on—and, Wendy, you touched upon earlier—Kazakhstan, our favourite subject, which we have spoken about previously, for the benefit of the committee. It did cause me concern, and I know we had a Zoom call to discuss this in detail. But, for the benefit of the committee, at a time when you're planning what can only be described as significant restructuring, you've announced plans to, obviously, open a new campus in Astana, in Kazakhstan's capital. So, during our conversation that we had, I did ask the question of what financial implications will that have on Cardiff University in the form of spending, and I recall that you said, 'No spend will be happening on our part.' But then I was slightly blindsided 24 hours later when a press release came out stating that there are going to be over £100,000 in legal costs. So, for the benefit of the committee today, I'd like to know, in relation to Kazakhstan: are there going to be any transitional one-off costs or recurrent costs that will be inflicted on Cardiff University as a consequence of opening the campus? 

So, I don't recognise that figure of legal costs that you have just identified, so let me say that first. Let me set the scene for the committee, because Natasha Asghar and I have had this conversation previously. Transnational education is part of the future for UK universities. There are some 600,000 students around the world already studying with UK universities through transnational activities of some sort or another, and, if you've been paying attention, you will have seen that we are in very good company in the recent period in announcing Russell Group transnational education initiatives—so, Exeter, going into Egypt; Southampton, going into India; Liverpool, going into China. So, us going into Kazakhstan is part of that.

We have quite a long-standing relationship with Kazakhstan; we've been receiving Bolashak scholars from Kazakhstan for many years. More generally, the UK-Kazakhstan relationship has been strengthening very significantly, particularly under new leadership in that country. And throughout this process, we've been working very closely with the UK ambassador in Kazakhstan, Kathy Leach.

We were approached last summer with the advice or the information that the Kazakhstan Government, while they had 23 other international universities already active in Kazakhstan, were very keen to have a Russell Group university in Kazakhstan and were we interested. That was when the work began. We are working with a foundation in Kazakhstan, a foundation set up by a number of leading Kazakh businessmen. We have very strong support from the Kazakhstan Government, who have guaranteed us a significant number of scholarships, not just for the first year, but indeed for the first four years.

But, of course, and I'm sure the committee is the same, Kazakhstan is not as well known as some of those other countries that I have just mentioned. So, of course, we needed to do due diligence. We have been working with a firm who have been doing transnational education advice for some 30 years. We have availed ourselves of their services. We used, as you would expect, professional services firms based in KPMG to help us set up the operating company that we will need to deliver the branch campus. All of these costs go into the pot.

This genuinely is that we are providing the academic content here. Our Kazakhstan partners, and indeed the Kazakh Government, as I've already indicated, are providing the infrastructure and the scholarships. So, yes, we have spent money. As I said, I don't recognise your figure, but we have spent money on due diligence. I would hope the committee would understand why such due diligence is important. We are in the process, even as we speak, of setting up the operating company to welcome the students in September. We've had, when I last checked, 186 applications already.

Understood. So, how much has been spent on due diligence?

I do not have that figure, but I can find it for you.

It's commercially sensitive as well, but yes. 

If you can share it with the committee, I think we would find that really useful, and we'd be really grateful for that at a later date, whenever you can.

We'll take advice and share with you what we can.

Okay, fine. You mentioned previously that the Kazakhstan project will, and I quote,

'not generate significant income for several years'.

So, what decisions led to pursuing transnational education opportunities during a time when financial difficulties—? And Mr Younge, I took what you said on board in relation to financial issues that are happening at Cardiff right now, and, obviously, leading to the uncertainty that exists among students, staff et cetera. What made you weigh up the decision saying that Kazakhstan is a good call to make right now?

Going back to Cefin Campbell's comments, turning a large, complex organisation like a university around will take time—as our chair of council has said, four years to do the work that we will need to do here, because if we disinvest from degrees we need to teach out those degrees. We can all crystal ball gaze in terms of when it is that the branch campus in Kazakhstan will be generating the revenues we anticipate that it will generate, but the reason I mentioned the applications data for this year is, to be honest, it is better than we had anticipated given that we were late to market. Like our schools, many of the schools in Kazakhstan have finished for the year. Our two open days have been hugely oversubscribed, we genuinely think there’s significant interest here. And as I said in my opening comments, transnational education, flexible lifelong learning—we will do some work around the commercialisation of our research; I’m sure that that conversation is going to come up a little bit later on as well.

We do need to think about the new revenue streams as well, and I think this is really important for the committee to understand. The exercise we’re embarked on is a repositioning exercise, an exercise to realise the ambitions of our strategy; it is not about us simply trying to do the same with fewer resources. As I have said over and over again, we will need to be different for the future and that’s the journey we’re on.

Thank you for that. In relation to the restructuring of the university itself—I’ll move back to Cardiff now, if that’s all right—thank you, both, first of all, for sharing the business case that you shared with the committee on Tuesday, which provides an overview of restructuring regarding the academic staff, but it does not provide an overview of intentions for further proposals for the professional services that your business case mentions, and I quote, ‘Reducing student numbers will enable greater efficiencies and cost reduction in professional services and overheads, as well as to academic areas’. To what extent is a reduction in student numbers driven by this wish to reduce professional services, and what are your intentions regarding such reductions?

I think I began to answer this question earlier on, but I will just rehearse it. Pending approval of the plans at council, we will need to think about what that means for our professional staff and, indeed, our estate. Let me be very clear for the record—and I have said this to the university as well, over and over again—there will be no equivalent of the Academic Futures process for our professional staff. We have already, however, begun work around the appropriate restructuring of our professional staff.

To give you two examples, we have both colleges and schools; there is no clarity at this point in time about what a college should do, vis-à-vis what a school should do, so we have an enormous amount of duplication in the university. So, we have a piece of work under way to be very clear about what professional services should be delivered at college level and what professional services should be delivered at school level, so that, as I've said to the university over and over again, we do things once, by the right people, at the right time, in the right place.

The second example is that we are in the process of restructuring our student services. We get very consistent feedback from our students informally, as well as through things like the national student survey scores, that our student services are inconsistent across the university, and that we are not joined up in the ways that we need to be. We have a variety of different practices and different approaches across the university, for good historic reasons, they've just grown by osmosis. But we are working very hard now to create student hubs, one-stop shops. This is the model in the sector where our students will be able to come, have their issue, whatever that might be, dealt with at one time—again, the right person, the right place, the right time. Again, this work is already under way.

So the take-home, I think, from what I am saying, is that the professional services work will be much more incremental: it will not look like this, this was the hard work, what are we going to look like academically for the future, and then how do we ensure that our professional services are wrapped around that activity appropriately.

One more, if that's okay, Chair. In recent statements, Cardiff University has acknowledged the effect of the consultation that it's had on student well-being and anxiety amongst staff. It's something that's prevalent, and I appreciate what you mentioned about the hubs being created going forward. But with the effect that this mental exhaustion must be having on the staff—. And I appreciate what you're doing for the students, but the staff are also our concern too, their mental health, their mental well-being. We are politicians. We fight for our jobs every four to five years. But for people in the teaching profession and those in academia, they wouldn't be doing what we have to do on a regular basis. So, I can understand their anxieties.

You have previously said in some statements that acting sooner would have 'just meant having these difficult conversations earlier', particularly in relation to the changes that are taking place at Cardiff University. So, how have you assessed student and—more importantly now, in my question—staff well-being, and what action are you going to be taking to ensure that their welfare is protected going forward?

Of course we consistently monitor staff well-being. That's a very standard part of our HR processes. We have seen not very much—a little—change in stress-related data. As is always the case, the majority of that stress-related data refers to personal stress, not workplace stress. But I absolutely understand the challenge here.

Indeed, as you will know from recent media coverage, our union is very concerned about this, and when it shared the results of the survey that it had conducted in February with us, we immediately established a working group with it, where we are working hard to think about what else we might do. Throughout the process, we have signposted very explicitly our well-being support within the university.

I have to say, as someone who knows a lot of universities, that Cardiff University is very well served in this regard. We have run dedicated sessions, particularly for those schools that are in scope, or were in scope, to help them understand the support that they might draw upon. I take the well-being of our staff very seriously. This is not easy. Change is really difficult. I do understand how challenging that has been for our staff.

As Pat, our chair of council, said earlier, the challenge of my job is that I have to think about the medium- and long-term future of this university. But that doesn't mean to say that I don't care about our staff. I care deeply about the well-being of our staff. And as hard as this process has been, I think that we've worked really hard to do what we can to ensure that staff have been adequately supported.

You mentioned that a joint committee has been set up in relation to well-being. When are the results of its findings going to be coming out?

We thought we were about to sign a joint agreement, a draft plan, next week. We were a bit blindsided by the decision by UCU to go to the media this week, but that joint working is under way. I am personally very committed to that. I have said that, both in public and behind closed doors. So I'm hoping that we can get that back on track.

The vice-chancellor is being very polite, to be honest. UCU did bring us their survey. We did meet with them. And there's a lot of talk about social partnership. We believe that we were working in partnership with them to create a new joint strategy, in fact. It was meant to be signed off next week. We then discover, on Monday, that they had issued a press release that they are taking us to the HSE.

We were actually informed of that after they had issued it to the press, and all I would say is that social partnership working works both ways, and I'm deeply disappointed in some of the behaviours. As chair of council, we have an obligation and a responsibility for everybody in the university, and we need to change that paradigm, because it isn't working.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. I didn't want to interrupt Natasha's line of questioning there, but if we just take a little step back, I wonder if you could share with us the report that you mentioned on due diligence. Is that something that you could do?

No, we can't, because that is deeply commercially confidential. Indeed, it hasn't been shared beyond those who needed to see it—myself; Pat, as chair of council; the chair of our finances and resources committee. That is not a document that we can share. It contains confidential—both financial and personal—information in it.

Okay, thank you. We now move online to some questions from Mike Hedges, please.

Can I start off by making a comment and asking for their view on it? A number of universities have caught a cold or burned their fingers on overseas developments. Swansea University was one, in the distant past when I was involved there. Why are you certain you won't?

Why are we certain that we won't catch a cold in terms of TNE? Which is a question council have asked. What we are doing is very limited. In Kazakhstan, initially, it's two foundation courses. Our initial activity in Kazakhstan is being largely underwritten through scholarships by the Kazakh Government. I've also met the Minister. I've also spoken to two of the other British universities in Kazakhstan. And obviously, we've done our ongoing due diligence. We are doing a limited number—I think Wendy's talked about Singapore, there may be a couple of others. We are doing it in a very limited way, and we're doing it in a very slow roll-out. So, two foundation courses is all we are doing in year one, and we'll bed those down and then we'll go again. 

The other question I've got is this: you've talked about the cost of research, why don't you get more of your research funded?

It would be lovely to have more of our research funded. Let me step back a little bit. The chair of council has already said we have a portfolio of around about £200 million open grants and contracts at the moment. The funding for that ranges from UKRI to charities to health authorities to industry funding. I think we all understand, notwithstanding the welcome announcement around research and development funding from the Westminster Government over the weekend, that Governments are struggling to find funding for research, just like they're struggling to find funding for everything else.

When we look to the future in our strategy, what we need to be thinking about are the new partnerships that we can build that will allow us to generate more funding—more funding from industry, for example, more partnership-based working of a whole variety of sorts that will allow us to deliver on our research, not for ourselves, but for our city, for Wales, and indeed for the world.

Let me give you some examples of work that is already under way to, again, help you understand this. One of my favourite projects in the university has funding from the Gates Foundation. So, again, this isn't traditional Government funding. This is foundation funding. It's called SunPad. They are inventing renewable sanitary products for women and girls that will revolutionise sanitary care around the world. It's an extraordinary project. I'm extraordinarily proud of it—again, Gates Foundation funded.

Let me give you another example. Our dementia research institute, which receives funding from a whole raft of different areas, has recently identified that there's a link between sleep disorders and neurodegenerative diseases later in life. A really significant finding that will change the way we treat dementia and other issues.

And then just a third example—again, this is a spin-out, so again, non-traditional funding—is Nisien.AI, which is using AI to identify online crime, including hate crimes. Again, non-traditional funding. We need to be doing much more of this.

But back to the conversation we've been having, we need to create headroom in the university in order to be able to do that reconfiguration that we need to do in order to ensure that we can do more of this work with our partners—the kind of research, the kind of innovation that changes lives. Let me be very explicit, this is right across our university. We've just approved a spin-out in the area of humanities. I'm really proud of this. This is not just about STEM is the point I'm trying to make.

I'd also add that our research recovery is standard, at 25 per cent. Any university in the UK will tell you that they lose 20 per cent to 25 per cent on research.

The figures are going the wrong way. There was recent information released, not for Wales—we don't have the Welsh information yet—but certainly for England, that suggest that the proportion has declined to about 30 per cent to 33 per cent. So, we'll wait to see the Wales information with interest, when that's available.

Just very briefly, if Cambridge were sat where you are now, would they say the same thing?

They would, but they've got an endowment that goes back 500 years.

Okay, fine. I won't take further information on that. Moving on, how was the university council involved in the decision and preparation of the consultation?

Council's role in this is quite specific because council's job is to—. We are the internal regulator, we're not the management, we're not involved in the day to day. We ask ourselves some basic questions. Does what's proposed align with the strategy? We spent a whole year doing the 'big conversation'—a massive participatory exercise across the university. One of the outcomes of that exercise, which I think everybody bought into, was that Cardiff University needs to be a slightly smaller, more focused university with better experiences for staff and students. And I think everybody buys the vision, but nobody wants their bit to be the bit that gets smaller, and that's natural and that's human. Has the process been rigorous? What is the evidence that the process will deliver? Are we going to be compromising quality? How do we ensure that, having done this, we can secure continuous improvement? How would we build the culture, and will it let the university fly? Will it let the university really achieve what it can? Those are the questions we asked ourselves at council, and having been shared the—. We weren't asked to approve Our Academic Future before it went out to the university. That's management's job, but we had an informational session with them, as did the unions, as did others, and we will now look at what's come back from that, and then we will take a decision. So, I won't give you a view on anything that's in Our Aademic Future, apart the fact that it is necessary, because council doesn't meet until next week.

Thank you. And we'll obviously find out what happened there, either officially or unofficially. What assumptions did you reflect about your proposed restructuring and the scale of the staff reductions in the plans you submitted to Medr?

So, we talked with Medr. Medr were fully cognisant of the plan prior to the release. We have been actively engaged with Medr throughout this process, both proactively updating them, and also taking advice from them, as needed. So, Medr have been fully informed and understand what we're doing and why we are doing it.

Diolch, Cadeirydd.

Thank you, Mike. We now have some more questions from Natasha, please.

Thank you, Chair. Just some questions in relation to the restructuring. Obviously, we're all aware that the press has been talking a lot about it, the unions, and we know about students, teachers. I think, as Members from different areas, patches, committees, we've all been approached by people who we've been in contact with in relation to the uncertainty of what lays on Cardiff's doorstep, basically. So, I just want to ask you, for the benefit of this committee, and hopefully have on record once and for all, how and when did you engage with the Welsh Government, Ministers and officials about the restructuring proposals?

So, I have the dates here.

That would be really appreciated.

So, on Friday, 17 January, I talked with the Minister's office and alerted them to what was going to be in the document. On Wednesday, 22 January, we revisited that conversation with colleagues from the Cabinet Secretary for health's office, because nursing was in the consultation document. On Wednesday, 22 January, I talked to both the chief executive and the chair of the Medr board and gave them an update. We talked with Health Education and Improvement Wales and the Cabinet Secretary for health on Monday, 27 January.

So, the relevant Ministers and the regulatory authority had full sight prior to release. The question that I was asked afterwards, understandably, from Cardiff MPs, both for here in the Senedd and in Westminster, was, ‘Why didn't you talk to us as well?’ We were clear, as my list underlines, about talking to those we knew we needed to talk to, because they had a role in this. Then we wanted to talk to our staff and students first. We had a fairly carefully curated release programme that did involve key stakeholders. It included the politicians. But as you know, unfortunately, we here had a leak. That is one of the things I feel very sad about this process—back to my comments about staff well-being—that some of our staff, particularly some of our impacted staff, learned from the media rather than from us what was going to be in the consultation document.

It is part of the reason why we have taken a different approach to the final plans. As you know, notwithstanding the fact they haven't gone to council, everyone knows what the content is before they go to council. But I'm happy to share the dates I've just recited to you, if it's helpful to have those for the record.

From an education perspective—I'm quite new to the committee—universities are quite an anomaly, whereas we know that the Welsh Government has control over schools, colleges et cetera. But universities— You just mentioned that the relevant Ministers were contacted, and they have a role to play. So, for my knowledge, and I'm sure everyone else’s, from a university's perspective, what role do you feel that our Welsh Ministers actually have when it comes to helping, supporting, bailing out, doing anything when it comes to the university itself?

Well, we are autonomous organisations. I think that's really important for the committee, and, indeed, it's not well understood by the public. We're not part of the public sector per se. We are autonomous organisations. However, of course, we are regulated, as one would expect. Medr is our regulatory body. And the Minister for Further and Higher Education, of course, has a role to play. Of course, there is funding that comes from Welsh Government—some funding that comes from Welsh Government. It’s really important to understand that our funding, as the earlier question underlines, comes from a wide variety of sources. But it was the Minister with responsibility for further and higher education, our regulatory body, and then, as I said, because nursing was in the proposal, we did speak to the Cabinet Secretary. 

That's fine. Hindsight is a beautiful thing, in all aspects of our lives. So, if you were to go back and look at the way the consultation has been carried out, as to the way everything's been announced, is there anything you would have done differently? 

I regret—as I've already said—I absolutely regret that some of our staff and students learned about the content of the consultation document from the media. I would do that differently.

How would you have done it differently? 

I wouldn't have shared it with senior staff, because that's where it leaked from. I would have gone straight to the well and actually told them. But we shared it with senior staff, and it leaked from there. It didn't leak from the unions, it leaked from our senior staff. That’s really disappointing. 

So, you would perhaps have called a town-hall meeting and had everyone there to do it?

Well, what we were going to do after the council meeting, when we knew that we were going to tell the whole university all at once—. Now, that's probably not ideal either, because if you're impacted, you're in a very different position to someone who's just interested to know what the outcome is. But that is what we will do differently. I think it's really important to understand—and I did make reference to the ACAS session very early in my comments—we have been going through a process that, as you would expect, we have taken a lot of advice on, legal advice and others. Difficult as it has been, our process is legally robust. We did have to put that number of people in scope because of the changes that were in the consultation document. I think people have struggled to understand that. We are confident that the process we are still in the process of working through has been done in ways that, on one hand, ensure we are doing what we need to do, and on the other hand, as much as we can, preserve staff well-being and the duty of care that we have both to our staff and our students. I regret that that's not as well understood as it could or should be.

And then, finally, I actually do regret—. As the chair of the council has said, Cardiff University is in very good company, including a significant number of the Russell Group universities, doing the kind of restructuring that we are doing. I do regret that we have become—. We have received our undue share of attention despite the fact that, as I said, many other universities—not just here in Wales, but in the UK and, indeed, globally—are grappling with exactly the challenges we're grappling with. As I said when I first arrived—it was one of the first public statements I made—it's an existential moment for universities. We're going to have to be different for the future. That's the work we're doing.

Okay. 

As chair, I wish the chairs and the sector—. Because I am surprised that people are surprised that the university system is going through what it is at the moment. I think as chairs and a sector, could we have done more to make people aware of the situation that universities actually are facing—fundamental structural challenges to the sector? And in Wales, those challenges are amplified by geography, and the fact that the current economic model for universities, with fees following students, gives Government very little ability to change direction. 

Income is determined by popularity. Income is determined by the number of people who apply to your courses and who can get the grades. That isn't a very strategic system. Medr is all about collaboration. The universities want to collaborate, but we can't collaborate in lots of different ways. So I'm disappointed that it took things to get to here before people said, 'Wow, what's going on in the university sector?'

Okay. My final question; I'm sure everyone's going to breathe a sigh of relief when I say that. In your recent Children, Young People and Education Committee update on 23 May, you referred to the need to ensure financial sustainability and, I quote, 'at pace'. What does this mean for you, given your recent announcement suggesting the reduction in the number of staff will take place over a number of years, and why have you taken this specific approach? And how has the pace of these particular proposals changed since you first announced the restructuring plans?

So, the pace hasn't changed. If we discontinue a degree, it will take four years to teach out. The consultation document was only a consultation document; no decisions had been made. Our commitments to our students currently in our programmes remain. Our commitments to students who've applied to join us in September remains, even if they have applied to join us in programmes that ultimately we've decided to discontinue. This is where the role of Medr is really important. They, quite rightly, will ensure that we take learner experience really seriously as we work through the changes we are wanting to make.

The chair of council talked you through our reserves earlier on. We have four years. At the end of four years, our reserves have gone. In the time frames that universities operate in, while four years might sound like a long time, it's not that long, given our need to teach out degrees and the like. I think it's been something of a revelation to the members of council from outside the sector that change in universities is different to change in some other sectors. The comments about senate earlier on underline this. It is a deeply discursive process, there's a lot of interested stakeholders. We've already talked about what that has meant for us.

Again, my job is to ensure that this university does change and changes in ways that are sustainable, and that that change is as well managed as it possibly can be, and I think that is the work we are embarked on.

Okay, thank you, Chair.

Thank you. We now have some questions from Vaughan, please.

Thank you. I think it is about the context in which the university is operating is in, and when your cost base changes, the need to change how you go about doing that. I take on board your point about the length of time to deliver savings. If we think about the last decade and a half, and, of course, Cefin Campbell, for example, was a cabinet member in a local authority when every local authority across the country had to make redundancies—. You generate savings on those redundancies much earlier, but you generate savings on those redundancies much earlier than the four-year time frame for a university. But there's a cost in delivering those redundancies in the first place, and you then enjoy longer term savings. So, I think it is important.

We've heard the point about disinvest to reinvest, and lots of our conversation has been about the disinvestment part rather than the reinvestment part. I was interested in the point that this is about how the academic profile of the institution is prioritised, moving forward, but the cost base around that, not just the cost and the income generation parts of teaching, learning and research, but the wider way the university works, so the estate and the need to improve student accommodation, which I think was a really interesting part of how the institution remains competitive in the future.

So, I'm trying to understand what this means for what you're setting out. Going through this difficult process of disinvesting in some areas, does that mean the university should be in a more strategically successful area, both in its teaching, learning and research, and the income generation opportunity should come around that, but then how you then choose to invest in that? So, does this mean that this set of courses that you propose ending up with, that is how you see that longer term successful future? And as well as the teaching, learning and research part, I'm interested in how you then expect to invest in the other activity of the university. So, you talked about the accommodation, the buildings—what that will do in terms of re-profiling your estate management costs.

And on the point about net zero as well, I think this is interesting, because net zero is a challenge for us globally. I'd like to have a planet for my son, and his children, hopefully, to inherit as well, but investing in net zero means there's a cost, but often a return as well, not just in carbon reduction. If you put solar panels on your roof, they will help you, but you've got to pay for them in the first place, and you'll see the return over a medium-term period.

So, I'm trying to understand the academic side of it first: does this mean this is what you think a long-term successful approach for the university is? And what goes behind that in the sense of not just popularity, but actually the point of whether you think these will be things that will be successful in not just generating student numbers, but your point around Cardiff being an institution for Cardiff, Wales, and the wider world.

And then the second part is: how do you then choose to invest? And will this lead you, when you have the academic side of it, to invest in those other parts, so the estate, the teaching, learning, research, and the student accommodation? Can we expect to see future choices around the bond money you've got to invest in that, and what sort of time frame are you working to? So, it's two different parts, about what does the reinvestment look like for the long-term success on the academic and research side of it, and what does that look like for changing the estate to invest in what should then be, we all hope, a successful future for Cardiff.

Okay. Well, let me talk about the academic future. So, Cardiff currently has a very, very broad portfolio. We have sustained that very broad portfolio through cross-subsidisation, rightly—universities do cross-subsidisation all the time. When times are good, you can do that kind of cross-subsidisation. Times are not good—I think we all understand that. So, the very hard decisions that we are in the process of making about areas from which we will disinvest are based on, to be honest, student demand. So, just to give you a feel for that: since 2019, demand for ancient history degrees declined by a third; modern languages, over a third; music, over 40 per cent; religion and theology, over 50 per cent. We simply are not recruiting students into these areas. It's a pipeline issue; this is not about the colleagues in those areas. The demand for those programmes simply isn't there.

That means, and, again, this is one of—. In the sector, we talk about student-staff ratios, how many academic staff you need to deliver programmes. And in the areas that we are looking hard at, our student-staff ratios are in single figures—not sustainable. So, that is why we're having these very hard conversations about areas that we might withdraw from. At the same time, we have other areas in the university where student-staff ratios are very high, and, indeed, continuing to increase. Now, at the moment, I don't have—. And they come to me all the time, saying, 'Our student-staff ratios are going up; we need more staff.' So, again, like any good leader, that reprioritising of resources is really important.

Now, to go back to where I started, we have historically had a very broad portfolio of disciplines. We don't have a veterinary school and we don't have a fine arts programme, but I think we've got most things in between. All universities, even universities much more highly ranked than us in league tables, are finding that they have to prioritise for the future. So, what we are doing, particularly our suggestions around school mergers, is identifying areas in which we think we have genuine interdisciplinary excellence and potential for even more of that excellence. That will then allow us to prioritise resources appropriately, to invest in areas where we truly have strength, excellence, and indeed potential, both in education and research terms.

We know the future is more challenge led. Universities have to be much better at not just telling the world what they're good at, but what they are good for. We change lives. We cure people. We do all sorts of amazing things. We build economies, et cetera, et cetera. We need to get much better at that. But we can't do that everywhere through all disciplines for all potential partners. So, being much more focused is part of the work we are doing here in order to really leverage those strengths, so that Cardiff University is the university we want it to be for Cardiff, for Wales, and indeed the world.

Now the question about investment decisions.

In terms of the other parts of the spending, so student accommodation is a big one, because we are so tight, currently, on student accommodation. We can't even take blocks out for refurbishment, because we then wouldn't have the capacity to deliver on our promise of a place for all first years and all international students. So, we have plans, and we have outline planning permission to build more. We also have an investment fund so that we can invest in improving the quality. Not only will that be better for our students, but we will not get to where we need to get to just by cutting the bottom line; we have to grow the top line, to use business talk. We can't really run a conferences business at the moment, because we don't have the accommodation that any grown-up person would ever want to stay in and pay money for. So, as we improve the student accommodation—as you know, those units aren't used for 20-plus weeks of the year—we have the opportunity then for other revenue streams.

We need to digitise. We're a university of spreadsheets and Microsoft Excel. Because, again, when times are tough—and we've been through this period over the last 20-odd years where our money's not grown in real terms—where do you save? Well, you don't invest in any finance system. You don't invest in a modern HR system. You don't have AI. We've probably still got people doing invoices on paper. You know, we have to invest in that core infrastructure. We also have to invest in digital teaching and digital assessment, and creating new spaces for students to study in that are much more digitally enabled. And that may then challenge, actually, our ways of working, because they may not be owned by college and school; they may be university facilities that people are timetabled through.

We do have our net-zero obligations that we need to meet. We do have the work that's happening on hubs. We have a massive maintenance backlog. I mean, I'm talking buckets under leaking roofs. I'm talking about computer servers in rooms with water ingress. You know, our staff deserve better facilities to work in, and our students deserve better facilities to be taught in. And all of you who've been involved in running anything know that they are the soft cuts that you make. Those are the moneys that you don't spend when moneys are tight. But they also become much more expensive to resolve the longer you leave them, and we've left ours plenty long enough. We need to actually go back and put that right.

So I'd be interested, as you get through whatever comes from the next stage, the university council's decision, what that looks like. Because this isn't just an issue for Cardiff. I mean, a long time ago, when I was in Aberystwyth, seeing new halls of residence being used in the summer was entirely normal, and it's an income stream for the university. And the truth is, universities are not going to win a fist fight in the education budget for more money with early years and schools, and I would support saying that can't be the right choice. If there's a lot of money, that's great, but, when you've got to prioritise, that's going to be the choice that this committee and others are going to demand.

So, I'd be interested in, once the Academic Futures part of it is resolved, how you go about the estate strategy and the income raising and generating strategy. Because not just Cardiff, but other universities have lots of summer programmes in the cities or the towns they're in and there are opportunities to generate income if you're able to.

But I want to come back from that to the point about the broader economy. So, I have long thought that some universities and further education colleges are successful at adding to the economy; I think there's always more that can be done though. So, I'm interested in how the needs of the economy impact on or help to shape the proposals that you have.

So, there's the point about the popularity of what students want to learn, and as somebody who loves ancient history, I regret that other people don't love it too, but there you go. It's not something that I think is going to generate lots of return for the future of the economy. Modern foreign languages, I think it's interesting that we don't get enough people who want to take that up in schools. I understand that there's a supply issue there if people don't want to do it. There's a whole range of other areas though too. So, I'm interested in: how do the needs of the economy help to shape the restructuring proposals? And, going back to the first point, what does success look like for Cardiff University? What does success look like for the city of Cardiff and for Wales and the economy? So, you know, there's an investment zone where I'd have thought that Cardiff University would have lots of interest in—

Absolutely.

—but it's more than that too. So, thinking about the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre, thinking about high-powered computing, there's a whole range of things that are not just interesting from a learning point of view, but are actually directly relevant to the economy, and not just in their proposals, but the point about the culture and the attitude of the institution. You talked a bit about spin-out companies, and if you look at Wales generally, not just Cardiff, and compare it with other parts of the UK, we aren't as successful in monetising for the economy the knowledge and learning that takes place in the university.

So, I'm interested in whether part of what you're trying to do is not just to say, 'Let's cut our cloth and live within our means', but, 'Let's also be more ambitious about how the knowledge we generate goes into the economy in a properly purposeful way.' Because I think there's more that we can do in Wales that we need to.

So, the short answer is, 'Yes, absolutely.' But let me give you the longer answer. So, commercialisation is something that we have been thinking hard about. The management team received a paper on that just this week, on precisely the kinds of opportunities that we might have at the moment. When we benchmark ourselves against other Russell Group universities, we perform quite poorly in that space, at around about 55 per cent. Now, some of those are really high achievers, the Manchesters and the like, but there's an awful lot more that we could be doing in that space.

We're also very clear that we need to be doing more work around research commercialisation. It's a little bit too early to share more widely, but the existing entities in this space—. Of course, we're very proud to be associated with SETsquared, which is, of course, one of the world's leading business incubators. Octopus Ventures report on entrepreneurial impact, and we're fourth in the UK for our spin-out success. And the significance of that report is that it looks at the durability of the spin-outs, not just, 'Can we spin out?' but, 'Do they survive and do they go on to make the economic difference that you and I both want to see?' Absolutely—

Sorry, can I ask you—? Sorry. On that, Wendy, is that fourth in the UK as in the number that spin out and are successful as a proportion, or is it looking at the volume and the cumulative impact?

It's the former rather than the latter. We'll be very happy to share the report with you. So, that's another action item; I hope someone's keeping track of these.

More broadly, your point about our role in the economy, of course, you know, our partnerships in the compound semiconductor industry, in another area our partnerships in the creative industries, and absolutely, these are partnerships and opportunities we want to leverage more strongly, building on those investments that my predecessor made in things like the TRH. So, we absolutely want to be doing more of that. We understand the importance of the industrial strategies, both from Westminster and the strategy that will come out of the investment summit here later in the year.

And then last but not least, what I want to mention or go back to is the initiative that we're putting in place around flexible lifelong learning, because this is not our traditional cohort of school leavers. This is us stepping up and playing our role in continuing professional development, micro-credentials, the kinds of enhancements to the skill base that we know we need in Wales, not just in the vocational areas, but in the areas that we do as a university. So cyber, compound semiconductors, sustainability—there are lots of examples where we're already active in this area, but we're very fragmented. We're not doing this at scale. This is as important to us for the future as the transnational education initiative is. These are the new opportunities that will generate new revenues for us, but actually, even more importantly, build capacity—build capacity for Cardiff, build capacity for Wales.

So, you know our strategy. That is the direction of travel here, but we are, to use the language we use, in what we're calling 'horizon 1'. Horizon 1 was about fixing the fundamentals. We do need to be able to pay for ourselves, but the aspiration is very clear, and the direction of travel is very clear.

I think it would be helpful if, not just Cardiff but the sector were able to look at where they think they can be significant and how to generate greater value and not be so fragmented. And I think that would be helpful for this committee to understand, not just the Government, because the point about where you see skills and opportunities, the opportunity to grow the economy, what you can do and will do anyway, and where the Government can be a helpful actor alongside that too—. We won't have time to go through all that today.

It does sort of lead into my last question, which is—. It's partly about nursing, but it's also partly about the challenge of competition and collaboration. So, nursing was one of the headline areas of concern. Cardiff looking to disinvest completely from nursing was a problem, and a surprise as well. But it's not just about the conversations with the Cabinet Secretary for health and Healthcare Inspectorate Wales around what that means. It is about your comments about the national student survey, about the quality of experience you're providing, as well as the volume of nurses that we will continue to need for Wales. I'm pleased that nurses get the opportunity to work in NHS Wales for three years as part of the deal on their funding, but there is something about the conversations you had and whether you anticipated the significant blow  that nursing in itself generated, but also the conversations you've had with other institutions. The University of South Wales were the obvious one that was talked about, and your view, and indeed USW's view, was you couldn't do that until you surfaced the proposals. So, I'm interested in, because you've seen change in that, whether there are further proposals we can expect to see around what that partnership looks like, whether it's just Cardiff, whether it's Cardiff and USW. And for the future, it goes back to the previous question, the ability for universities to collaborate and to do that in a way that is successful for institutions and the country, and what actual changes we do or don't need to see around the competition framework as well. Because I think there's some—. I've read your paper that suggests that there is a recognition that, maybe, the current competition law framework is not helpful, and isn't actually doing what the framework's supposed to do, to help the economy, to try to avoid unhelpful monopolisation, but that, actually, in some areas it's necessary to have a conversation.

So, tell me where we are with the nursing conversation, and then tell me where you think we could be on competition. Maybe you need to send us a note with the sector, so we don't just get a single institution view on this. But more broadly from the sector, are there changes that can be made? Are there changes here in Wales that we could make, or are these changes that need to be made at a UK level?

So, nursing is the one that, for me, was the most challenging at the time. So, we were grappling with our nursing programme. We were struggling to recruit a sufficient number of students onto the programme. The student experience was not what we wanted it to be. That meant we were struggling with completion rates. We were struggling with the cost of that programme. So, while the rest of our student fees had gone to £9,250, for that programme the fees were stuck at £9,000, and, of course, nursing is a very expensive subject to deliver.

Now, I am as committed as anyone else to the success of the NHS, and I absolutely wanted to have the kind of grown-up conversation that Medr had signalled that Wales should have, as we move towards a more collaborative yet differentiated tertiary sector. That was the experience I'd come out of in New Zealand. But I was given very clear advice by Universities UK, by Medr, by my own university, by the universities that I wanted to have that conversation with—. The absolute clear message was, 'Any such conversation cannot take place until your proposal has been released.' We released the proposal, and the rest is history.

We are now in a much better place with nursing. We have been able to have the conversations with Health Education and Improvement Wales and with Welsh Government that we needed to have, and I do want to commend our pro vice-chancellor for the biological and life sciences college—Stephen Riley—himself a clinical academic, who has led much of this discussion. So, you know we will retain nursing. You know that we will have a future nursing provision that is more appropriate to us as a Russell Group university that will allow us to improve student experience, improve the postgraduate research offer, and, indeed, improve our research in this space.

The nursing example, I think it is fair to say, put the Competition and Markets Authority on the radar, not just here in Wales, but for the sector. So, the Universities UK efficiency and transformation taskforce has just released its first report, and has clearly identified the lack of clarity, or perhaps the outdatedness, of CMA guidance as an issue for the sector, in a context where we clearly need more collaboration. The CMA itself recently released a blog, which is a step in the right direction, but they have committed to doing more work in this space to try and clarify. But interestingly, what they're saying is, 'Well, look, there are no issues around shared services and the like'—some of the other things that have been talked about in the context of the financial challenges in the sector—but they are still very nervous about institutions having conversations about provision that they see as potentially breaching commercial confidentiality.

My personal view is we need to be able to have those very grown-up conversations in Wales. I don't want to see cold spots in Wales for any subject. For us to be having those conversations, we do need to be much more collaborative. There's goodwill amongst the universities for this. We do work together on a whole raft of things already. Back to your earlier question, Cardiff capital region brings together ourselves, USW, Cardiff Metropolitan University. We do great work around civic mission together. There are lots of examples where we are collaborating. But this question about delivery of subjects remains one where I think we'll need further guidance and clarification.

And is that at a UK level?

That's at the UK level, absolutely.

So, it's a sector-wide issue across the UK.

It's a sector issue. It's not our issue, it's a sector issue. As I said, we were the case that firmly put this on the radar of the sector and, indeed, of the CMA, to be honest.

And the chairs did ask if we could get a derogation. All we need is for someone in Welsh Government to say, 'If you have the conversation and if somebody complains, we'll cover you.' So, we asked if we could get a derogation from that particular—. Because the chairs, you know, we are autonomous, we all act in our own interest; as a trustee, that's my job. My job isn't to worry about the welfare of the others, it's to protect Cardiff University. Now, we all see the benefits of the sector and we see the benefits for Wales. So, the chairs said very clearly, 'If you don't watch it, you will get these cold spots, because we will all—'. There is a danger that we all opt out of the same subjects at the same time, and at the moment, there's no lever anyone can pull to stop that happening. So, I think it is important for Wales that you find—. And if you can't get it from the CMA, maybe you need to issue a derogation to allow those conversations to happen.

To take my Cardiff University hat off, for three universities to be offering the same subject in one city at a time of financial stress does sound a bit bizarre when one of them was prepared to exit and the other two could actually have become stronger through that. But at the moment, you can't have what, in any other world, would be a rational conversation. It can't be had, and that makes no sense, especially when money is as tight as it is.

I think it's also—

Are you saying a Minister here could issue a derogation?

Well, we've asked, 'Can you see if you can issue a derogation? You are the responsible body for education. All right, the Competition and Markets Authority sits in London, but your education sector needs this. Could we get a derogation?'

I think it's important to understand that absolutely anybody can make a complaint to the CMA.

Yes.

So, it's not just impacted parties—a person on the street can make a complaint to the CMA.

'I wanted to study nursing at Cardiff University and I can't because they—'.

Yes.

Yes. Okay.

Can I just pick up on one comment you made right at the end there, when you were alluding to duplication in this one city, that you couldn't have a sensible conversation around that. Why not? I mean, what are the barriers? What really—? Because this worries me that we can't have those conversations.

So, under the CMA, we're not allowed to talk to other institutions about ceasing to provide services, because technically we're in a market—. This pseudo market that we're in—

Because of the competition rules?

Yes, because of the competition rules.

Right, okay. 

And it all follows this stupid notional idea that we're in a market, like a fish market.

Yes, okay. Thank you for that.

Okay. We now—[Interruption.] Yes? Thank you.

I could talk for longer, Chair, if you want me to, but I suspect you'd like me to stop. [Laughter.]

Never. [Laughter.] We have two final questions now from myself, if that's okay? In your business case, you repeatedly outline your intention to reduce the number of students being taught at Cardiff University, while frequently referencing concerns surrounding league tables and maintaining tariff. You mention you are committed to widening participation for under-represented groups of students. How do you plan to achieve this?

So, again, let me set the scene here. In the last couple of years, as international student numbers have begun to decline, a number of universities, including ourselves, have tried to compensate for that by recruiting more home students. What that meant was we went into clearing and accepted more students with lower tariffs than we would have historically. Some of the background work behind Our Academic Future really helped us understand that that was compromising both our staff experience and our student experience, because our staff were teaching a much more mixed cohort than had been the case historically, and our student experience because we weren't able to provide the support we might have wanted to support—again, for a much more diverse student body. And then we realised, actually, in part because of the declines in the real value of the home fees, that, actually, there was no financial value in doing that. So, we are signalling our intention to not do that. You will have understood from the letters from some of the Welsh VCs that that behaviour—and I hasten to add it wasn't just us, it was across the board—has had quite significant implications for institutions who historically may have taken lower tariff students. So, we think this will be good for Wales more generally, albeit noting that a number of Welsh students go to English universities.

So, does this mean we're going to be more elite? No, it doesn't. It means we're going to hold tariff. We are deeply committed to widening participation. I, myself, am from a background where my family, my community, we didn't go to university. I know universities change lives for kids like me, from backgrounds like mine. Some 14 per cent of our students come from widening participation backgrounds. We're close to the top in the Russell Group in that regard. We're very proud of that. We will continue that commitment. We will also continue with contextual offers for students who may well have the potential, but not be as well prepared as students who've had other opportunities. We are very committed to this. So holding tariff is not the same as becoming more elite.

Thank you. And for my final question, the committee has received written evidence raising concerns about Welsh-medium provision as a result of the proposals being made across universities in Wales, which specifically identify the position of Cardiff University. You say in your business case that any further decision making will consider the Welsh language skills of staff in determining the capacity required to achieve targets. How has the Welsh language been considered during the current consultation and in assessing applications for voluntary severance and voluntary redundancy, please?

So, I'm really committed to enhancing the use of Welsh language at Cardiff University. I come from New Zealand, Aotearoa. As some will know, we are bilingual, bicultural. This is a terrain I respect and understand, albeit acknowledging that it is different here in Wales. We made the decision very early in our process to take the school of Welsh out of scope. It was in scope initially. We are very clear about our need to not just preserve but bolster Welsh-medium delivery across all our disciplines. I do understand some of the concerns. For example, we've been doing really great work in nursing. We want to continue that great work. It's really important we have healthcare professionals in Wales who can speak the language of Wales. You know we've been doing really great work in our medical school in this regard as well. So, absolutely, it is front and centre. We are thinking very hard about this. We're very aware of the targets for Welsh-medium delivery. We will be working in partnership to deliver those. Again, I'm clear about my commitment to Wales, to Welsh language, and indeed to Welsh-medium provision.

And I can say on behalf of the council that is an absolute commitment; we will not backtrack on our commitment to not just preserve but to expand Welsh provision in Cardiff University, not just in the school of Welsh, but across the institution.

Thank you. Could I bring Natasha in here for a second?

Thank you so much. I'd just like to correct the record. I didn't want to present any misinformation to the committee. I asked a question earlier about Kazakhstan and quoted a figure of around about £100,000. The figure stands at £62,000 as of April 2025. This was provided by a freedom of information request. The £100,000 figure, I will relay that to you, Wendy; that's about a figure that I will be discussing, potentially privately, and we can take that further at a later date. But I just wanted to set that record straight, if that's okay with everyone. Thank you.

Thank you, Natasha.

Thank you for your time this morning. We really do appreciate you joining us. You'll be sent a transcript for checking in due course. So, thank you for your time this morning again. Thank you.

Diolch yn fawr, Chair.

Diolch yn fawr. Thank you.

So, I'll now move on to item 3, which is papers to note. We have two papers to note today, full details of which are set out on the agenda and in the paper pack. Are Members content to note the papers? Yes.

Moving on to item 4, I propose, in accordance with Standing Order 17.42(ix), that the committee resolves to meet in private for the remainder of today's meeting. Are Members content? Yes. We will now proceed in private.