No plans to close Lampeter University campus
Bruce Sinclair, local democracy reporter
There are no plans to close Lampeter University campus following the recent decision to end undergraduate tuition there, University of Wales Trinity Saint David has said.
In January, Lampeter University students learned of the decision to cease to have any university education with its humanities courses transferred to Carmarthen, just days after more than 100 students and alumni took their battle to save the university to the Senedd, ending undergraduate education after almost 200 years in the town.
Petition
A petition to save the university has come close to collecting 6,000 signatures online and on paper.
On January 23, University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) Chief Operating Officer Peter Mannion confirmed – in a letter to students – the decision to move current and future Humanities teaching and learning to the UWTSD campus in Carmarthen from September 2025.
Following that, a meeting to discuss the future of the campus site was held on February 27 in the University’s Arts Hall, chaired by Elin Jones, MS, with Vice-Chancellor Professor Elwen Evans KC and senior officers present.
Enrolling
UWTSD has now said there are no plans to close the campus, but the number of students enrolling at Lampeter had made undergraduate provision unviable.
“The number of students enrolling on Humanities courses across the UK higher education sector has reduced significantly over recent years. UWTSD has been impacted by this decline.
“With only 92 undergraduate students it is not viable to maintain the infrastructure of a university campus with all of its buildings and services.
“The university has therefore made the decision to move teaching of its Humanities courses to its Carmarthen campus from the start of the new academic year in September.”
It said a formal project was being established, including local politicians and councils, to “draw together and present viable proposals to the University for securing the future of the campus and bringing new opportunities to the Lampeter community,” with the first meeting expected later in March.
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What an idiot is Medwyn Hughes. All he is concerned about is himself. He is not a Welsh man when all he is concerned about is getting involving with royalty and promoting himself- what a laugh he is.
Medwyn’s long gone. No doubt he started the rot with all the empire building in Swansea and point east. A lot of the modern day Vice Chancellors are driven by personal greed – build big, make it more “commercial” and thus justify big business executive salaries. Without risking a bean of their own money. Some enterprise that !
I was a student quite a long time ago at SDC Lampeter, between 1964 and 1969; first as an undergraduate and then, from 1967, pursuing a further post-graduate qualification. Those years were my very first experience of moving to live in Wales, where, having rather taken to life in this appealing nation, I’ve spent around half of my – by now! – rather long adult life. Back then in my distant student days, from memory the college had rather more than 200 students. After I left, I gathered that numbers had swelled, and on the odd occasions when I’ve gone… Read more »
Such a shame small though it is it provides a great education and promotes the local community.
I would Ask all concerned to reconsider.
Reopen the Aberystwyth to Carmarthen line and make Lampeter the centre of a Welsh “Golden Triangle” to rival Loxbridge.