The timing was ironic. In a week when Chancellor Rachel Reeves was celebrating the critical importance of universities to the economy by announcing the creation of a growth corridor between Oxford and Cambridge, the best university in Wales was announcing the loss of 400 academic posts.

In response to increasing financial pressures, Cardiff University announced that it was closing schools, merging others, and cutting posts across its portfolio to try to reduce a potential £65m deficit for 2024-25.

It also suggested that further redundancies could be on the way, admitting that reducing the remaining financial gap would depend on further proposals for rationalising professional services with more potential job losses down the line.

How did the university reach this situation, especially as it has admitted that demand from international markets has been falling since Covid and that the UK market has been flatlining for several years? Was it a case of hope over expectation that it could turn this situation around?

If this is happening to our best university, what does it mean for the others? We already know that over a thousand jobs have been lost and that the next academic year may be even more financially challenging despite these cuts.

Seven months ago, in this newspaper, I warned that “it is imperative that the new Welsh Government now undertakes an urgent review of the future of our universities and conducts an honest and open debate on........

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