Madam,

The proposed cutting of staffing levels at Aberystwyth University is a matter which should concern everyone who knows and loves our town.

In perhaps no other town in the country does a higher education institution have such a symbiotic relationship with the town in which it sits. The cuts themselves are excessive and smack of short-termism and lack of strategic vision.

For example, at present cuts are underway in the History Department that go far deeper than needed to actually meet the savings requested, without any rational justification. The loss of research and teaching expertise has a direct impact on the ability of the department to attract and retain further students, creating an entirely preventable negative spiral which will definitely impact student recruitment in future. Given that there is no actual need for cuts this deep, this amounts to deliberate vandalism.

Thanks to cuts carried out with similar blindness across other departments, student recruitment will inevitably suffer, and there will be a very significant impact upon the businesses and organisations in this town which rely on the thriving student population to generate revenue and to attract much-needed investment.

It needs to be noted that it was not front-line teaching staff who generated the enormous financial debacle that was the Mauritius campus, yet predictably they are being left to shoulder the brunt of the damage to the university’s financial position this huge waste of capital caused.

Separately, university staff are striking because of proposed changes to pensions that could in many cases more than halve their retirement income. We are told this is justified because of a supposed ‘deficit’ in the pension scheme. There is in fact no deficit. The scheme has grown 12 per cent per annum for the last five years and could currently pay out for 40 years without having to touch base assets.

I would urge everyone who loves our town to contact Ben Lake MP to bring direct scrutiny to bear on the university’s authorities over the management of the current cuts to staffing levels, given the inevitable negative impact to Aberystwyth that they will cause.

Yours etc,

Rob Bennett, South Road, Aberystwyth.

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