There’s nothing new about Cardiff University being insolvent. In 2017 the International Financing Review (IFR) revealed that the institution’s debt – borrowed from banks, private investors and bond markets – added up to over £300 million, borrowed at an interest rate of 3% over 40 years, while it operated on a surplus of just £150,000 a year. The IFR calculated that, when the loan ends and the capital must be repaid, it would take 2,000 years to pay off the debt! And this was in a period when the cash cow of the lucrative foreign student market, upon which the University had become totally dependent, seemed as if it could be milked for ever. Things have got a lot worse since then. The foreign students have disappeared, put off by Brexit, by the UK’s astronomical cost of living, by new visa restrictions on immigration introduced by the Tories and retained by Labour and by the general squalor and broken public services resulting from 15 never-ending years of draconian ‘austerity’.
Cardiff University, now with a £30 million black hole in its annual budget, is essentially bankrupt. Coming to a shuddering halt are all those years of preening boosterism, of obsession with growth for growth’s sake, of posturing ‘Russell Group’ elitism, of rapacious expansion and property speculation, of obscene salaries for its vice-chancellors, governors and managers, and of being far too grand and far too ‘international’ to stick to its founding purpose of educating the young people of, sniff, little Wales. At least 400 academic staff are to lose their jobs (8% of the workforce), many departments are to be amalgamated and others are to be abolished outright – mainly subjects in the humanities, like music, history, theology, languages, nursing, sociology, etc which can’t be monetised and allocated ‘value’ as readily as science and business subjects. This colossal devastation is just the beginning, since savings will ‘only’ be £9 million – barely making a difference to the ocean of debt the appallingly-run, bloated basket case has racked up.
This is actually wonderful news for Cardiff. Look at the many benefits:
■ No more of the hideous, half-empty, speculative towers and blocks built by the profiteering ‘student accommodation’ sector that have annihilated neighbourhoods and desecrated the city. All planning permission for any more must be revoked while most of the carbuncles that have been built already can be used to house the homeless or just pulled down:
Adam Street Gardens, Alwyn Court, Arofan House, The Bakery, Blackweir Lodge, Bridge Street Exchange, Cambrian Point, Canvas Cardiff Lime, City Heights, Clodien House, Crown Place, Eclipse, The Fitzalan, Glendower House, Howard Gardens, Livin, Lumis Cardiff, North Court, Northgate House, Richmond Square, Severn Point, Shand House, Summit House, Ty Pont Haearn, Vita Student Cardiff, The West Wing, Windsor House, Zenith
■The student accommodation owned by the University itself should more than suffice, or be repurposed to tackle Cardiff’s grave housing crisis:
Aberconway Hall, Aberdare Hall, Cartwright Court, Colum Hall, Gordon Hall, Roy Jenkins Hall, Senghennydd Court, Talybont Court, Talybont Gate, Talybont North, Talybont South, University Hall plus multiple houses in Colum Road, Colum Place and Park Place
■A drastically scaled-down University (30,000+ students at the moment) will mean welcome relief and rebirth for areas that have been destroyed by ‘studentification’, particularly Cathays, Maendy and Roath. All the parasitic slum landlords, all the greedy ‘buy to let’ chancers and all arrogant, know-nothing, anti-social adolescent slobs can go back to middle England and Cardiffians can have our city back.
But that is just the start of what needs to happen. Cardiff University, which is actually registered as a charity, should be requisitioned by the Senedd and turned into a not-for-profit public utility, owned by the people of Wales and existing to serve the needs of Wales. The way the University has gone about its business for decades must cease: using Cardiff as a mere postcode for unbridled empire building with complete disregard for the consequences; whoring to unscrupulous capitalists to rake in investment, regardless of any ethical considerations; and, in cahoots with the despicable Cardiff Council, pumping up consumption, pandering to the ‘hospitality industry’, giving a false impression of being ‘vibrant’ and ‘youthful’ and thereby concealing the deep dysfunction, wastefulness, unsustainability, transience and low-grade hopelessness of the Cardiff economy. There was a good example of this hauteur and condescension when the cuts were announced this week without any consultation with the Welsh government, or even prior notice, despite the huge impact on Wales – as in, for instance, the end of the nursing department.
The University’s total disregard for Wales means it has forfeited all right to continue on the disastrous path it has followed. It was the donations of Welsh workers that brought it into being, it was the gift of huge tracts of Welsh land that allowed it to find a home, and it was the diligence, commitment, skill and talent of its Welsh founders, academics and students that built its reputation from nothing right through to the 1970s. It must be cut down to size to become the proportionate, congruent, vital centre of intellect, excellence and learning that Wales requires.
As for jobs, the staff cuts must be stopped but any staff who dislike or don’t want to acknowledge the fact that the University is in Cardiff, capital of Wales, can go – everyone else can remain, on average Welsh pay rates, to rebuild something to be proud of from scratch. And what about the top brass, who have presided over this catastrophe? I know exactly what to do with the Vice-Chancellor, New Zealander Wendy Larner, the entire Board of Trustees, the Chair of the University Council, Patrick Younge, and all the 20 Council members: they can pack their bags and get on a plane to Astana, Kazakhstan. There they can put into practice the ridiculous globalist ‘international’ aspirations they had been planning, with branches scattered around the planet starting with Kazakhstan. And they can be accompanied by most of the 350 high-paid staff of the Business School, the University’s single largest department – reserving a special place for the School’s Professor of Applied Economics Patrick Minford, the genius rightwinger who advises Reform UK, thought the poll-tax was a good idea and said Brexit would be a guaranteed success. He can handle the authoritarian state’s uranium exports.