The Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) has warned of job losses and the closure of courses as a result of falling funding levels. Giving evidence to National Assembly Finance Committee’s inquiry into further and higher education funding, they said it was “inconceivable” that budget restraints would not lead to cutbacks in teaching and research.
HEFCW warned that key areas such as science, technology, engineering and maths could be exposed to the biggest cuts, due to the expense of providing them and the dwindling number of students opting to take them.
Jenny Randerson, the Liberal Democrats’ education spokeswoman, said: “Why can’t the Labour- Plaid government see that cutting the education budget is going to have massive impact on our children’s future and have a devastating effect on the health of our economy?
“Labour and Plaid Cymru are slashing 5% from across the university budget when they should be freezing central administration budgets and investigating the misspending of money in the NHS. The Welsh Lib Dems have presented fully-costed plans to avoid slashing education funding but Labour and Plaid chose to ignore them.”
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