IHEF 2024 forward look: Gwen Williams, Universities Wales

Next month, the international education community will once again gather in London for UUKi’s International Higher Education Forum (IHEF).

In preparation for my IHEF session, I have been asked to consider what makes international education in Wales distinctly Welsh. It’s a potentially vast and interesting topic. Have the policies and programmes we’ve developed in Wales been shaped by our size? Does the answer lie in a historical context? And, critically, what does this mean for how international education in Wales evolves into the future?

Over the last couple of months, with these questions in mind, I’ve found myself mulling the answers.

Firstly, size. I would argue that Wales has a distinct advantage in having a sector that is large and diverse enough to represent the breadth of the UK offer, while small enough to foster genuine inter-institutional collaboration. Universities Wales Committee, with its 8 Vice Chancellors and the Director of the Open University in Wales, grapple with the issues of the day and explore solutions to them – all around one table. Furthermore, in a small sector, there is less competition for access to government, regulator and other relevant institutions, lending itself nicely to wider pan-Wales collaborative opportunities. The Global Wales partnership and more recently the Wales Innovation Network, are both products of this model of collaboration.  

But what of the history of our institutions? From universities founded to train for the priesthood, to those established through the voluntary contributions of local people, and specialist colleges founded by the leaders of the great industries of their day - all were born from their communities, which they have continued to serve to the present day through what we now term civic mission. Is it any wonder, then, that when in January 2021, universities in Wales jointly launched a Civic Mission Framework, that it was the first of its kind in the UK, and the first in the world to have all universities in a nation signed up to it?

More broadly, readers may be aware that The Wellbeing of Future Generations Act (2015) in Wales requires public bodies to consider the long-term impact of their decisions as a ‘globally responsible nation’.

One of these public bodies will soon be Wales’ new Commission for Tertiary Education and Research (CTER), responsible for the strategy, funding and oversight of post-16 education. CTER will have 12 strategic duties, including, notably, promoting a global outlook.

How do we sustain a diverse and globally competitive sector for future generations? How does international education adapt to meet our increasingly pressing climate responsibilities? These questions, globally relevant yet enshrined in Welsh legislation, will be for CTER to contend with when it comes into being formally this August.

The promotion of a global outlook has, of course, never been more important. With international student recruitment set in an extremely challenging and competitive external context, Wales and its institutions need to innovate and become better equipped to compete globally. The consequences of not doing so are immense – directly impacting on institutional sustainability.

But as we know, it would be blinkered to think of international education purely in these terms. Like their UK counterparts, Wales’ institutions have significant international networks in research and innovation, learning and teaching and mobility and benefit greatly from cross-border learning and the exchange of students and staff. And while it’s true that international students are currently critical to the sustainability of the sector, they also offer us that diversity of community and of intellectual thought that so benefits our students, staff and wider communities.

One person who saw this and spent much of her life supporting international students, happened to be my husband’s late grandmother.

Born in 1921, the product of a Welsh-speaking religious non-conformist tradition, Mamgu, had a powerful social conscience, strong community ideals and a Welsh identity based firmly around internationalism. She shared these principles with her husband, a professor of religious studies, and both travelled extensively before settling at the outskirts of Lampeter, where for decades their house became home-from-home to generations of international students.

Yes, Mamgu was an advocate for international education long before most of us gathering at IHEF were even born. Yet, like many young women of her generation, she did not have the opportunity to benefit from higher education herself. Her family was not well-off or well-travelled. Hers was a Welsh upbringing from the history books.

So, to conclude, perhaps there is something distinctly Welsh going on after all? Could there be something about being a small, collaborative, community orientated, bilingual nation that lends itself to the desire to learn from and do well by others through international collaboration? I think so, but then again I would!

What is universal is that in turbulent times, we’d do well to remember the legacy of Mamgu - of personal connections spanning the globe, of learning from and doing well by others, and of being globally responsible.