What Brexit will mean for higher education in Wales
EU leaders meet in Brussels today and tomorrow for The European Council summit – at which it is hoped EU leaders will give approval for transition trade talks to start with Britain. Here Professor Iwan Davies, Senior Pro Vice Chancellor of Swansea Univers
HIGHER Education is one of the biggest growth industries in the world. It is forecast that an extra one hundred million places will be needed over the next 15 years – equivalent to building four universities for forty thousand students somewhere in the world every week.
This is a demand that is overwhelming in the emerging east. To put it another way, the global demand for higher education is greater than that for cars.
The debate about Brexit and the impact on Welsh Universities needs to be assessed from this perspective.
Where there is world-class research and teaching there has never been greater need and opportunity. Welsh Universities should be at the vanguard of these opportunities and yet there is a mood of bewilderment within the sector partly because of an overly pessimistic outlook on the adverse effect of Brexit.
Given the scale of this global prospect, this is odd and demonstrates that the debate has misunderstood that education and particularly higher education forms an essential part of the Europe agenda.
Higher education is intimately connected with making Europe more globally competitive so that it can compete with rising stars in the emerging world.
This is why the great student mobility initiatives, such as Erasmus+ and the successful European Research Frameworks, both of which Wales has benefited from greatly, are run by the European Commission for the benefit of making Europe stronger rather than individual countries.
As such, they are outward facing initiatives rather than intergovernmental ones. So Erasmus+ and future research framework programmes are designed to accommodate third-party nations.
The UK must now negotiate and become a third-party nation, taking advantage of these initiatives. It is unthinkable not to be able to do so, not least because Erasmus+ exchanges are possible with every country in the world and are the centrepiece of the Commission’s post 2020 policy.
Similarly, Horizon 2020, supported as it is by the investment strategy of the European Investment Bank, has enabled our Universities to scale-up joint research on issues of global concern such as climate change, environment, health and ageing. Improving this research base is a key part of making the whole continent of Europe more competitive, not just the EU because, as Stephen Hawking put it: “Free movement of scientists is as important to science as free trade is to market economics.”
Ultimately it is talent that matters and this is in abundance within our universities.
The announcement last week removing uncertainty in respect of EU citizens having the right to live, work and study in the UK is a reason for optimism and is a clear step in the right direction.
Wales can participate in Horizon 2020, the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever. In the context of Erasmus+, in order to be a full-programme country, all that is required is a small change in future regulation that explicitly includes the UK.
Wales should be able to participate in future research programmes as well as Erasmus as long as the UK commits to pay for these programmes and settles the account which appears, in principle, to have been negotiated last week by the Prime Minister. At the same time there are deep EU and UK partnerships seen in the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, the European Space Agency and the European Institute for Bioinformatics.
We know that Wales is committed to EU students beginning their studies in 2018/2019 and staying for the duration of their studies, which will take us past 2020.
In terms of Welsh students going to the EU, they are covered by an EU directive giving them the right to move freely in Europe.
Also, in terms of recognition of qualifications, the UK has indicated that it will continue to recognise EU professional qualifications after March 2019.
There is a danger that the debate about Brexit is a distraction from the real task of universities in Wales which is to plan for global success.
It may be that the real challenge for Welsh higher education will not, in the end, be Brexit but will be the need to maintain momentum by capitalising on global trends in higher education – the so called ‘class of 2030’ universities on the rise, especially in Australasia.
Welsh Universities need a global long-term vision, a clear view of the changing world, and a robust plan to generate more resources whilst focussing on innovation including harnessing new partnerships and institutional models throughout the world.