HARD times lie ahead for Wales’ universities if the Higher Education (Wales) Bill currently before the National Assembly is enacted.

Its content has the potential to change the whole character of universities, constraining them and limiting their ability to compete on an international stage.

It should be a matter of serious concern to everyone in Wales that the Bill enables the Higher Education Funding Council Wales (HEFCW) to control the activities of universities.

Such control is completely contrary to the true essence of a university which is essentially a community of teachers and scholars able to set its own standards and determine the qualifications of its members.

Whilst I am fully in favour of a properly accountable higher education sector, I am convinced that the form of micro-management outlined in the Bill is entirely at odds with the essence and ultimately, the well-being of Wales’ higher education institutions.

In addition, the Bill also enables HEFCW to set terms and conditions on activities which are not funded from the public purse.

This exceeds the commonly accepted principle that regulation should only extend as far as public funding.

In seeking to use student fees to impose this further control, it can be argued that the fees, which may be supported from public funds, should enable the student to hold the HE institution to account.

In the same way, the public funder can hold the student to account in completing his/her studies.

In this student-grants way, too, the Bill opens the door to HEFCW control of institutions which are not funded by the public purse but may have some students in receipt of publicly funded grants.

The Bill also gives new legislative and judicial powers to HEFCW.

This will have significant consequences for institutions in terms of substantial increases in administrative costs and litigation.

Whilst I have not commented specifically on access, fee plan matters, the subordinate legislation arrangements and the ensuing effects for individual governors of changes affecting the charitable status of institutions, these are all matters which merit serious consideration at the highest level.

As it currently stands, this Bill is detrimental to higher education in Wales.

It gives a non-academic body, answerable to government, control over universities.

This in turn means that they will no longer be ‘universities’ determining their own affairs, rather they will become instruments of government via HEFCW.

My earnest hope is that people of all backgrounds from across Wales will ask their elected representatives in the Assembly why we need this inappropriate level of central control and question the wisdom of imposing it.

In doing so, they will help to ensure that Wales’ universities continue to have the freedom they need to develop in both breadth and depth to meet their students’ needs and to compete successfully on a worldwide stage.

ELSA DAVIES

Bancyfelin