In January I spent a day in Cardiff, primarily to attend a protest at the Senedd about the planned closure of undergraduate teaching at the Lampeter campus of the University of Wales Trinity St David. I got involved initially because a friend of mine is a Lampeter graduate and she’d asked for my support. However, the more I learned about the issue, the more I came to think it is something everyone in Wales should care about.
It is easy to dismiss such a protest as trivial. Middle class, middle-aged academics at a tiny campus in mid-Wales are losing their jobs. So what? It is a minority interest, isn’t it?
That may be, but anyone from a marginalised community should see the problem with the argument that minority interests are the first that should be sacrificed on the altar of economic necessity.
The protest is also indicative of where we are now as a society. No longer is it working class people manning the picket lines to protest the loss of their jobs, and of whole industries. It is the middle class that are doing that now. Who needs humans, Kier Starmer is suggesting, when “artificial intelligence” software can do the job instead?
But it would be a mistake to think that this was only about academic jobs. To start with, there are students affected too. Listening to them at the protest, I got the impression that they felt that decisions were being taken with little care or consideration for their educational success.
Also, universities don’t just employ lecturers. There are caterers, cleaners, groundskeepers and so on who will lose their jobs. There are shops that will struggle without the student trade. The impact on the Lampeter area will be serious. That’s something that the university administration won’t have taken into account, and it is why the Welsh government was being asked to get involved.
There is also Lampeter’s place in history to consider. Founded in 1822, it is the oldest university in Wales, and the third oldest in the UK, beaten only by Oxford and Cambridge. It hosted the first rugby match ever played in Wales. That’s something that we should be proud of, not throwing away.
It is easy to see why the university is keen to close the campus. Student numbers are low and falling. The buildings are old and in need of extensive repair. Doubtless they think that the land could be sold for a good sum, though who is going to invest in Lampeter with the campus closing down is another matter.
The university administration claims that no one wants to study at Lampeter, which perhaps reflects their low opinion of the town. Supporters of the campus suggest that it has been the victim of a program of deliberate managed decline, so that a case could then be made for closing it.
Certainly there seems to be an unseemly rush. Mere days after the protest, the university announced that a final decision on closure had been taken.
The plan, at the moment, is that all undergraduate teaching at Lampeter will be moved to Carmarthen. It seems unlikely that Lampeter’s excellent library, with its priceless mediaeval manuscripts, will go with them. That would cost money. Rumours are already being spread that the Carmarthen campus will also be closed, and all teaching moved to Swansea or Cardiff.
"The arts, culture, and even sport are yet more minority interests that must be sacrificed because more and more cuts are seen as the only possible response to economic difficulties."
Writer
And yet Cardiff too has announced significant cuts to teaching staff. One of the departments heaviest hit is Ancient History, which is one of the areas in which Lampeter specialised. The Welsh government has recently announced an additional £19m in funding for universities, but this has already been condemned as too little, too late. The response from universities has been to announce more cuts.
Something that doubtless counts against Lampeter these days is that it is an arts and humanities campus. With Westminster increasingly seeing education solely as training for a job, that’s not the sort of thing that is looked on with favour. It should be a national disgrace that Wales, the Land of Song, a country famous for celebrating its bards, spends less per person on the arts than almost any other country in Europe.
The Welsh government doesn’t seem at all ashamed. The arts, culture, and even sport are yet more minority interests that must be sacrificed because more and more cuts are seen as the only possible response to economic difficulties. Austerity thinking has our government in a vice-like grip.
If only, you might be wondering, if only there were some science-based, job-focused scheme that could have breathed life back into the Lampeter campus. Something, perhaps, that would take advantage of the rural location and agricultural expertise. Something that would be in line with the government’s promised wish to create a greener, more sustainable Wales. And the sad thing is that there was.
In 2022 the university announced, with much fanfare, the creation of the Tir Glas project. According to the project’s website it would be:
“a community of thinking and experiential learning devoted to the study and development of sustainable rural life; promoting economic prosperity and sovereignty, environmental responsibility and the preservation and enrichment of cultural heritage.”
It was to bring fresh prosperity to the Lampeter region, and establish a centre of excellence that could have made Wales a world leader in sustainable agriculture research. The project was awarded £583,000 from the UK Community Regeneration Fund. And yet, last year it all fell apart (in English). Key members of staff left, and the university suspended the project. Soon afterwards the university announced the plan to cease undergraduate teaching at Lampeter.
That grant has apparently all been spent. It is not clear what on. It does not appear to have been spent on teaching students.
If I were a minister in the Welsh government, I would be very concerned that this potential flagship project has been allowed to collapse, and with it the hope for significant economic regeneration in the Lampeter area. I would want to know what went wrong, and why. And I think everyone in Wales should be interested in those questions too.
Of course most of them are not, because they don’t know what happened. The mainstream media has been largely silent on the fate of Tir Glas. Kudos to Aled Scourfield for covering it so well in the article linked above, but his report has only been published in Welsh. Elin Jones MS has got some valuable TV time to advocate for her constituents, but TV news is very ephemeral. Other than that, mainstream media seems unwilling to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy of austerity. No wonder alternatives are seen as unthinkable.
Cheryl Morgan runs a science fiction and fantasy publishing house, Wizard’s Tower Press. She is an expert on trans history and a regular public speaker on trans topics. You can follow Cheryl on Mastodon.
