Small is beautiful in Wales

Wales has a lot to offer, as the English have discovered. Half of all students attending Welsh universities come from England, and the University of Wales degree – awarded by all the universities except Glamorgan – commands a lot of kudos abroad.

But a five-year objective to consolidate that success – by widening access and boosting the number of students by 34,000 – is proving problematic. The combined university, founded in 1893, was recently described as "bureaucratic and outmoded" in a report from the Welsh Assembly, and Cardiff and Swansea are threatening to produce their own degree. A merger between Cardiff and the University of Wales College of Medicine looks set to proceed, but although many of the institutions are too small to operate efficiently or achieve effective critical mass in research, there is resistance to wide-scale mergers.

"Institutions in Wales are generally much smaller than in the UK," says Professor Les Hobson, expert adviser to the Assembly's education committee review and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Glamorgan, "Some are finding it difficult to make ends meet. The review wants to make the system in Wales stronger by means of internal collaboration, and I do think we need to have a larger student base, and achieve that through meaningful collaboration."

Despite being one of the largest institutions in Wales, with over 20,000 students, Glamorgan is still relatively small, and this is making it harder to compete, he believes: "Many institutions in Wales, especially in the west, are heavily reliant on recruitment from England, and with universities there becoming more competitive, you have to be very fast on your feet to survive. It's something we really need to address."

At the other end of the scale, Lampeter, Wales's smallest university with around 800-1,000 full-time students – some 65 per cent from England – also recognises that its size presents problems.

"We've been involved in two sets of merger negotiations that did not come to fruition," says the Vice-Chancellor Professor Keith Robbins, "We do recognise that we have considerable difficulties addressing all kinds of things like health and safety legislation, because we don't have the level of expertise on site to deal with it effectively. We're looking at ways we can become more efficient and reduce costs, and avoid some of the duplication that does exist."

He is optimistic that something can be done, but the problem is how? "Outside Cardiff and Swansea, we're all relatively small institutions in relatively small centres of population," he says. "We're all spending a lot of time in meetings discussing it, but it's not very productive. We've got to find a way of cutting through all that and escape from this immobilism."

Robbins believes the upcoming academic year of 2002/2003 will be critical in terms of delivering on some of the issues addressed by the assembly. The expression of the Welsh education minister, Jane Davidson – "the status quo is not an option" – has become a kind of mantra. "But, as with any federal system, it's a matter of getting the right balance between recognising the distinct needs of each institution, which are not all the same, while at the same time preserving the benefits of being part of a bigger club. You can never achieve an absolutely stable position."

But Lampeter, which joined the University of Wales in 1971, has no ambitions to start offering its own degrees, says Keith Robbins. "We think the University of Wales degree facilitates cooperation, even at the curricular level. I hope we can find a way of keeping the significance of the University of Wales degree, but possibly include in it various ways of indicating the extent to which the degree is site specific, such as mentioning the institution the student studied at."

Meanwhile diminutive institutions such as Lampeter have a lot to offer, he believes. "It's a small and compact campus in an attractive small town surrounded by attractive countryside. You're in a very close community, with none of the problems of transport to get from halls of residence to the university, for instance, and easy access to all the university staff. But obviously it's an environment that doesn't suit everyone. It's horses for courses."