Balancing generosity of financial support for students against vital funding for Welsh universities will be a key focus of a long-awaited independent review of higher education, a minister has said.

Speaking to Times Higher Education, Cefin Campbell, deputy minister for skills and tertiary education in Plaid Cymru’s minority government, said the review of post-18 education led by Patrick Prendergast, former president of Trinity College Dublin, will consider how much the devolved administration in Cardiff provides undergraduates and the direct support for research and teaching in the nation’s universities.

“It’s a balance,” said Campbell, a former university lecturer, noting that the Welsh government is “walking a tightrope between supporting the institutions through fees and supporting the students with potential long-term debt”.

Welsh tuition fees are currently the same as England’s, £9,790 a year, and the previous government committed to raising the fee over the next two years in line with inflation, as England is doing. But Wales has a more generous system of maintenance support, which includes non-repayable grants, for students from poorer backgrounds.

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“We know this is a conversation happening in Westminster, around the freeze on student loan thresholds,” Campbell said about the UK government’s decision not to raise the £29,385 threshold above which English graduates begin repaying loans. That measure is intended to increase revenues from repayments, but with inflation above 3 per cent, it has drawn criticism for dragging more lower-income graduates into repaying their student debt.

“Getting that balance right [between institutional and student support] is absolutely one of the key asks of this panel,” Campbell said.

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The review, called by the party after it  from Labour in the Senedd election earlier this year, will “examine how higher education in Wales is funded and organised, including student support, institutional funding, research and the sustainability of the sector”, the Welsh government announced on 15 September. It will deliver an interim report in summer 2027, with a full final report issued the following winter.

While Scotland is undertaking a similar review of its higher education sector, attention in Wales is likely to focus on its “generous and progressive” student maintenance support package, which provides those from the lowest-income households with higher grants than in England.

According to a policy paper published in January, the Welsh government student loans outlay has “risen significantly in recent years, particularly for full-time maintenance loans, as both total loan entitlements have increased and the proportion of students eligible for the largest loan amounts has also increased along with household incomes”.

But with universities in Wales having announced hundreds of job cuts in recent years, there is also pressure to ensure that institutions are supported. The region’s flagship institution, Cardiff University, sparked widespread anxiety about higher education capacity when it announced plans in early 2025 to shed 400����Dz��� and to close several programmes not offered elsewhere in Wales to address a deficit of nearly £30 million – although the cuts were subsequently ���������������������.

“Higher education is one of our greatest national assets in Wales,” said Campbell, citing the pivotal role of “key anchor institutions” in “educating our future workforce, driving research and innovation, supporting public services, strengthening communities and contributing to our unique language and culture”.

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However, the “sector is facing pressures, and we need an honest, evidence-based conversation about what Wales needs from its universities”, he continued, saying it was important that Welsh universities are “sustainable, ambitious and able to deliver for learners, for the communities where they exist and the wider Welsh economy”.

“We have eight of them in their different localities, and they employ a lot of people and they contribute a lot to the local economy,” he said.

Campbell also wants the panel to “look at how we support learners because we know there are pressures on our students in terms of the fees they pay and the loans they have to repay over most of their working life. There is a conversation across the UK about how we get that balance right,” he said, adding that he is a “father of three children who have been through this system, and they are burdened with a big debt.

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“I’m hearing young people tell me if they had known what they know now, maybe they wouldn’t have gone to university in the first place,” he explained.

The Welsh government has not “been prescriptive in any way” about the review’s terms of reference. But it has stated that the review must deliver “fiscally neutral” recommendations that require no additional state resources, and Campbell accepted that this would necessarily entail “difficult political choices for us to make”.

“We’re bringing in these experts to help them help us understand our priorities…But let’s wait to see what they come up with, and maybe we can have a conversation at that time around what recommendations they make,” he said.

“What I will say is that we have no appetite for putting restrictions in place to stop young people going to any university they choose,” he said, referring to concerns that the Welsh government might bar Welsh students from using their loans to attend universities outside the country.

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But Campbell is also keen to draw students from England into Welsh universities. To that end, the panel will be asked to advise on “how we can strengthen the Welsh offer: how we can make our universities more attractive for young people to come here to study, to live and then to potentially work here when they graduate, helping them to contribute to the prosperity of the Welsh economy”.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com