Cardiff University chief accused again of misleading Senedd members

Martin Shipton

The Chair of Cardiff University’s top decision-making body has been accused of seeking to mislead the Senedd in a letter of clarification he wrote to the Chair of a Senedd Committee.

TV executive Pat Younge, who chairs Cardiff University’s Council, said he had felt obliged to write to Buffy Williams MS, Chair of the Children, Young Persons and Education Committee, after being accused of lying when claiming at an evidence session last week that most people in the university were on board with the university’s controversial cuts programme.

He defended his comments to the committee and said he had not lied.

Cuts

But a member of staff at Cardiff University who spoke on condition of anonymity told Nation.Cymru: “It is reported in the press that the Chair of Cardiff University’s Council, Pat Younge, wrote to Buffy Williams MS to claim that he told the truth when he told a Senedd committee in relation to the University Executive Board’s plan of cuts that ‘everybody buys the vision, but nobody wants their bit to be the bit that gets smaller’, even though the University’s Senate had just unanimously rejected the plan of cuts the day before.

“Younge claims that he was not talking about the programme of cuts in general, but strictly and only about ‘a preceding strategy development exercise, Y Sgwrs Fawr – The Big Conversation’. If so, the past tense would have been more appropriate, but the claim also lacks credibility because nobody would have known which ‘bits’ of the university were to be cut at that stage – this was only announced at the end of January 2025, after the ‘The Big Conversation’ exercise had concluded.

“Perhaps in Younge’s mind, it all blended together somehow, after all. But how would a claim that everybody supported ‘the vision’ during the ‘Big Conversation’ exercise stack up? It is a little difficult to say because the claim that ‘everybody buys the vision’ in relation to a historical strategy development period – a period when that strategy (or ‘vision’) was by definition not yet fully developed or presented – does not make much sense. Nevertheless, there are indicators: staff variously dubbed the exercise ‘The Big Smoke Screen’ or ‘The Big Monologue’, but there is also more solid evidence.

“During ‘The Big Conversation’ exercise, Cardiff University published several staff surveys (so-called ‘pulse surveys’) on staff perception of the ongoing exercise. The August-September 2024 results show that at that time, only 56% of staff agreed they were ‘given the opportunity to help shape our new strategy’ (the remainder being neutral or disagreed). By the October-November 2024 results, only 37% of staff agreed ‘the changes we are making will help us deliver our new strategy’ and only 36% of staff agreed with the statement ‘I feel valued and recognised for the work that I do’. By the December-January 2025 results, only 31% of staff agreed ‘UEB [the University Executive Board] are open and honest in their communication to staff’ – some buy-in!

“In light of this, Younge’s statement to the Senedd Committee looks at best misleading, but more like an assertion contrary to the truth, aka a lie.”

Plea

Meanwhile a former member of the University Council made a last ditch plea to the university not to proceed with its cuts programme.

Until leaving through voluntary redundancy last month, James Whitley was a professor of Mediterranean Archaeology at the university.

In a letter to all members of the University Council, he expressed his concern that if the cuts go ahead, Cardiff will become a university in name only.

In his letter he said: “Clearly, Cardiff University needs to save money and to operate more effectively. I just think that a managerialist approach to these matters is bound to backfire. Once subjects are lost they are lost forever, and this will have a long-term and entirely negative impact on the people of Cardiff and south Wales. Cuts on the other hand can be made to any part of the organisation – buildings and bureaucracy in particular – without long-term negative effects.

“My other grounds for opposition is that universities ought to be true to their founding principles. As set out by Viriamu Jones, the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire (of which Cardiff University is the heir) had the Classics at its heart. It also very much valued what we now call outreach – it was not simply there to serve those who excel academically but also those who had an interest in human history and culture, broadly understood. This outreach function is now well served by Continuing Education (about which the proposals are silent) and by the ‘Exploring the Past’ programme within the School of History, Archaeology and Religion (SHARE), the School on which the cuts will fall most heavily if the proposals put forward by the UEB are to be approved.

Languages

The Letter continues:“The proposal you have before you modifies the original proposal somewhat. Some languages (eg Spanish) will be retained, as will Music. All will be part of the new ‘School of Global Humanities’. BA/BSc degrees in ‘Global Humanities’ will replace those in History, Archaeology, Ancient History, Religion and Theology and so forth. The ancient world will neither be studied nor taught, and ‘religion’ will be excluded from any understanding of the world as it is (rather than as metropolitan secularists would like it to be).

“There seems to be a widespread belief amongst the UEB that the Globe will in the future be English-speaking, and will not be religious, and that the major civilisations and cultures of the modern world need not pay any regard to the wisdom or heritage of the ancient world.

“The language remains managerial and instrumental, and the word ‘academic’ appears only once. It assumes that a university is primarily a business not a charity – it treats students as ‘customers’ and pays no regard to where they might be coming from (such as south Wales).

“The argument is that subjects must be lost so that money must be saved. It also assumes that subjects are only valuable insofar as they are useful – useful to tackle climate change, or somehow to ‘fix’ social problems (the current vice chancellor is very invested in the idea that social sciences can be applied to ‘fix’ things). There can be no discussion about ends – only about means.

“This vision for a post-academic university – which ought to be an oxymoron, but for the managerial elite clearly is not. This view is I think both profoundly wrong and deeply unrealistic. What it is not is an academic vision – that is, a vision that pays any respect to the founding principles of the institution, nor to the tradition of enquiry that the word ‘academic’ represents. It is written by those who have forgotten the meaning of the word.”

He urges the University Council to reject the proposals.

The Council’s decision is expected to be announced on Wednesday June 18.