University of Wales faces break-up Cardiff and the College of Medicine are seceding, and the federation may fall apart.
Not unsurprising. Cardiff have wanted to do this for years. One thing I learned during my three years as a PhD student at Aber is that the constituent institutions of the federal university do not like each other that much. Aber, Bangor and Lampeter get on fairly well, but the gossip about Cardiff was always absolutely poisonous. It may be no bad thing, either. Each of the institutions now has a fairly distinct identity, and they're all now big enough to stand or fall on their own. It shouldn't have an impact on Lampeter's DL programmes, because they're mainly in areas for which Lampter has a good reputation in any case. Angela
I wonder what benefits accrue from the federation? I wonder the same about University of London. I'm sure that UCL would like to finally sever any relationship with King's. Why not split them all up and let them sink or swim on their own?
Slightly smaller administrative overheads. One registry in Cardiff does all the work for things like degrees. That'll have to be split up and each consituent college will have to do all administrative tasks themselves. However, as they already set all their own exams and do all their own admissions, they've already got most of the infrastructure in place. Come to that, if I had a job at Cathays Park, I'd be rather worried at the moment. Financially, they already have complete independence, so they do sink or swim. As for separate degree granting powers, I can see the less prestigious colleges in the federation being rather less keen on that one than UCL or KCL. I can also see a case for retaining central functions like the library, careers, ULU and ULCC. It would also be a moot point where the external programme would go if a break-up ever happened. Logically, it should probably go to Birkbeck, but the majority of the undergraduate courses have LSE as the lead institution and the postgrad courses are split over a number of colleges. Angela
