Staff express alarm at Cardiff University’s new teaching programmes

Martin Shipton

Teaching staff at Cardiff University are concerned about 28 new Domestic Foundation Programmes they fear could compromise academic standards, oversight, quality control and staff workloads.

The programmes – referred to as DFPs are aimed at UK home students who do not achieve A-level (or equivalent) results good enough for admittance to existing courses.

The courses work by adding a “Year 0” to existing three- or four-year degrees which will then feed into Year 1 of programmes taught across Cardiff University.

When rumours started to circulate about the schemes among staff in early 2026, it was initially assumed by many that this would not be something they would have to worry about until the 2027-28 intake at least. This is because new programmes typically take years to plan, design, and get validated.

It is not uncommon that getting a new programme of study validated takes many years. The long periods taken over this kind of painstaking work is a reflection of an academic institution’s commitment to ensuring high academic standards.

Staff were therefore shocked to learn this summer that these degree courses had been rushed through planning, design, and ratification by the University Council to be offered to applicants who miss out on their required A-level grades for the 2026/27 intake.

The DFPs will introduce 27 “pathways” to undergraduate programmes across all colleges within the university this year, and each will have its own UCAS code.

But staff have concerns over the lack of scrutiny of the academic quality of these hastily-developed and ratified foundation years. The plans were brought before, and ratified by, University Senate (the body which oversees academic standards) this year, but the introduction of the schemes was buried in Senate papers as a “minor change” and there was limited to no discussion of them.

After much speculation and worry over who would have to teach these new degrees it has recently been made clear to staff in Schools that they will have to be taught from “existing provision” and no new staff will be hired. Worries about workloads have been dismissed with claims that it is anticipated there will be relatively few students taken on the programmes this year.

There are also concerns about academic standards, and the admission of students to study on the degrees with A-level (or equivalent) results far below the standard offers for study on existing undergraduate programmes (for example, it is understood that some of the FYPs will be taking students who have attained CCD or even CDD at A-level for entry into programmes which usually make standard offers at ABB). When asked about the implications of this for academic standards and the university’s reputation, staff have been told that it doesn’t matter because a loophole means these low grades won’t affect performance in key league tables.

‘Academic standards’

A Cardiff University academic who did not want to be identified told Nation.Cymru:“Staff are really worried about the hasty introduction of these ‘back-of-a-fag-packet’ programmes. Academic standards and the quality of student experience for students who met their grades are a big issue because we’ll now be taking applicants who’ll have A-Level grades that just aren’t up to scratch, and it’s doubtful that these quickly thrown together new programmes will be able to get them up to scratch in just a year.

“There’s also lack of due process regarding normal lengths of time devoted to developing new teaching and the limited staff input from expert instructors at subject level. This isn’t some bureaucratic issue – it’s about ensuring high standards fitting with our reputation. Developing new programmes in a matter of months is not a good look, neither is the lack of scrutiny from governing bodies.

“Then there’s the huge issue of increasing workloads for the remaining staff who’ve not yet lost their jobs or left the university since the recent huge cuts began. They’ve told us that this won’t matter because there’s only a small planned intake this year, but that’s not reassuring – we’ll still have to find the resources to teach many new modules from scratch, and for the first time, when we’re already at breaking point.

“Again, decisions seem to be being made in panic for financial reasons but without a care for sky-high levels of stress among staff. That managers seem to see nothing wrong with all of this is unbelievable.”

‘Nine working days’

Later, the source told us: “The plans for the programmes were designed, in at least one college, at college level in nine working days with zero involvement from teaching academics. The modules in these plans that have been circulated to staff are currently little more than just titles – this week colleagues in a number of Schools were asked to ‘express interest’ by the next day if they wanted to design them over the summer on top of our existing workloads. What this means is that it’s worse than I’d anticipated – the programmes, and the modules which make them up, have not been designed yet. This suggests that they can’t yet have meaningfully gone through the kinds of painstaking validation processes that are standard.

“Separately, it is possible that these schemes are hoped to bolster the university’s ‘Widening Participation’ agenda, taking more applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. Other universities in the region might have something to say about this, though, and might well see these plans as an attempt at poaching from other cash-strapped local institutions.”

Questions

We put a series of questions to Cardiff University’s communications team and asked for a response:

* What existing undergraduate programmes will be fed into by the new Domestic Foundation Programmes?

* What fees will be charged to students on the new Domestic Foundation Programmes, and what are projected revenues from the programmes for 2026-27 and 2027-28?

* How many students are estimated to be recruited via the DFPs in 2026-27 and 2027-28?

* What will be the standard A-level entry requirements for students recruited to the programmes, and what is the lowest entry requirement that it is anticipated applicants will be recruited at?

* Will reduced entry requirements on the DFPs, relative to higher standards on existing programmes, affect the university’s performance in league tables or their wider reputation?

* Will new or existing staff be hired to teach the new modules on these programmes, and if so how many?

* How long did it take, from conception, through planning, validation, and ratification by Council, for the university to develop existing foundation programmes (e.g. the existing foundation year in Engineering)?

* How long did it take, from conception, through planning, validation, and ratification by Council, to develop the new Domestic Foundation Programmes?

* What scrutiny has been given to the academic quality of these degrees in terms of validation in particular (how long did the process of validation take, how many reviewers were involved, and how many rounds of changes were made before validation)?

* What kinds of, and how much, scrutiny was given to the introduction of the new programmes by the University Senate?

Instead of treating our questions as journalistic enquiries, the university has decided to treat them as a Freedom of Information request, thus delaying any answers by around one month.