According to the Western Mail the future of Lampeter University hangs in the balance and is dependent on a large cash grant from the Welsh Government if the life-saving merger with Trinity College is to come off.
They say that the university is in a desperate financial plight, with plans to merge with Trinity University College, Carmarthen, from autumn 2010, only possible if Lampeter makes nearly £2m in savings. To achieve this, it has set out plans for 46 full-time equivalent redundancies, including 29 from the academic staff.
The unions have written a joint letter to education minister Jane Hutt, calling for an emergency funding package that would enable older academics to take voluntary redundancy. They say that if extra cash is not made available an industrial dispute would be threatened, creating a real danger that Trinity would walk away and the merger would collapse.
They believe that if that happened, Lampeter would have to stop taking on students and would close in three years with the loss of around 300 direct jobs and a devastating black hole in the West Wales economy.
It is a nightmare scenario and one that may give Jane Hutt sleepless nights especially as Lampeter is in the constituency of her Cabinet colleague, Elin Jones. Elin and her Plaid Cymru collegues will not want to see the University cast adrift by their Government so close to a General Election.
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