Universities are Failing Wales
Press Release from the Institute of Welsh Affairs
For publication after 11.00 am Tuesday August 3rd 2004
Wales’s universities do not take Wales seriously. Indeed, the
existing higher education system does the people of Wales a great
disservice and in many basic senses it fails.
This is the controversial argument put forward by Dr Richard Wyn Jones,
a senior lecturer in the Department of International Politics at University
of Wales, Aberystwyth and director of the Institute of Welsh Politics,
in a speech delivered today (Tuesday 3 August 2004) at the National
Eisteddfod in Newport.
Giving the annual Institute of Welsh Affairs Eisteddfod lecture, Dr.
Jones attacks the sector on three broad fronts – failure to
promote Welsh medium education, the small amount of research work
carried out on Welsh issues and an inability to stem the brain drain
of talented young people to universities in England.
“Any national higher education system that is worth its salt
gives proper attention to the needs of the nation that supports it,
side by side with the issues and values that are common to learning
everywhere. This is not what happens in Wales by a long, long way,”
he states.
Dealing with research, Dr. Jones describes the amount of work being
done on aspects of life in Wales as startlingly low. His analysis
of work presented for research assessment in the social sciences field
- areas broadly similar to those managed by the Assembly – shows
that Swansea submitted the highest number of items but still less
than one third of its total research work. Fewer than one in five
items submitted by Cardiff related to Wales and the figure for Glamorgan
was 6.5 per cent.
“Under the surface things get even worse. Recently we heard
that the Department of Anthropology at Swansea will close, the only
department of its kind in Wales. Things are far from healthy even
in the fields of Librarianship and Education, which, according to
the data, are the two strongest fields,” he says.
As a result our knowledge of many aspects of the life of contemporary
Wales is pitifully inadequate. This in turn constrains the task of
creating policies that could deal successfully with the complex economic,
social and cultural problems of our country, he says.
Nor, Dr. Jones argues, can the universities claim that they succeed
on their own terms as British higher education institutions and that
focusing too closely on parochial Welsh affairs would stop them from
competing on the international stage.
Cardiff alone is able to claim this with a ranking of seventh in the
UK in the 2001 research assessment – with the next highest Bangor
at number 47 and three Welsh institutions: North East Wales Institute,
Trinity College, and Swansea Institute occupying three of the last
four places in the list of 106 UK institutions.
“Jane Davidson, and indeed all of the politicians in Wales who
have responsibility in the field of higher education, should study
[these figures] very carefully because understanding [them] also means
understanding why their policies on higher education are more or less
a total failure.”
There is also criticism in the lecture of the Assembly Government’s
failure to recognise the extent of the detrimental effect of educational
emigration. Only 62 per cent of students from Wales study in higher
education institutions in Wales compared with 93 per cent of students
in Scotland and 95 per cent of students in England.
“It is hardly an exaggeration to suggest that many of our country’s
economic, social and indeed cultural problems are connected to the
fact that a huge proportion of the young people of Wales move to England
to study in higher education institutions. As many of them turn into
more permanent exiles, Wales is deprived of a significant proportion
of its most educated vibrant and enterprising young people –
the organic leaders that could help urban and rural communities in
Wales to stand on their own two feet.”
No-one should be fooled into believing that the thousands who flock
from England to universities in Wales make up for the educational
emigration. Many of them stay here and contribute in valuable ways
to the life of Wales but for the vast majority the universities of
Wales are a stepping-stone to an alternative aim back on the other
side of Offa’s Dyke, he states.
This is a brain drain that a small country can ill afford but even
so a brain drain that neither our higher education institutions nor
the Assembly Government seem to consider a problem.
“One sign of the pathologically warped world view held by parts
of the Welsh Labour Party was evident when some of its Assembly members
used the word racist in opposing Plaid Cymru’s efforts to insist
that achieving a higher percentage of students from Wales studying
in Wales should be a policy aim. It is highly unlikely that there
is any government in any other developed country that would not consider
the figures a cause of enormous concern. But not so the Government
of Wales, it would appear”, he says.
Dr. Jones’s other concern is the failure within the universities
to turn verbal support for Welsh medium higher education into meaningful
activity within the institutions. He points out that Welsh medium
provision remains static at a time when the number of students in
higher education is increasing.
“Universities tend to set the tone for the whole educational
framework. The skills and features that are considered important and
valuable by universities are internalised by our secondary schools
– directly through the pressure to prepare prospective students
for the best institutions and departments in the higher education
world, or indirectly through the teachers themselves who are the product
of university courses. The failure of our universities to take Welsh
seriously is a serious obstacle to the further development of Welsh
medium education.
“The lack of Welsh medium provision in the universities has
the effect of confirming the second-rate status of the language by
suggesting that the only appropriate place for it is in the less crucial
parts of the education system.”
Dr. Jones believes there is a glimmer of hope, despite his gloomy
analysis. “We now have a Welsh government that makes an effort
to address the enormous problems of this poor and stubbornly self-destructive
country. Considering how central universities and the higher education
sector in general are to contemporary society, ultimately it will
not be possible to ignore [these] failings.
For further details or a PDF of the full text of the lecture please
contact the Institute of Welsh Affairs. Tel: 029 2066 6606 or Email
rhysdavid@iwa.org.uk
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