In early 2025, Vikki Howells – then freshly installed as Wales’ Minister for Further and Higher Education – asked Medr for an overview of the demand, provision, and distribution of subject areas across higher education in Wales.
As per the Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act, Medr has an explicit duty to map subject availability – the argument was that fragmented oversight had allowed gaps, duplication, and instability to develop across the post-compulsory sector.
The mapping function was a precondition for coherent planning – without a system-level view, institutions would keep expanding or withdrawing provision in isolation, and learner choice would suffer.
What she now has is 117 pages of charts, tables, annexes, and carefully hedged observations that add up to fairly forensic public examination of Welsh HE’s subject mix.
Medr’s data tells a story about a system simultaneously too concentrated geographically, too thin in subject breadth, and – perhaps most provocatively – not primarily oriented around serving Welsh-domiciled students at all.
The big numbers
In 2023/24, there were 150,680 enrolments at Welsh higher education providers, distributed across nine universities, a handful of FE colleges, and a small number of alternative providers. Business and management dominates at 17 per cent, followed by subjects allied to medicine (12 per cent) and social sciences (10 per cent).
Cardiff University is by far the largest provider at 33,020 enrolments; Aberystwyth, the smallest university, has 8,320. The FE colleges and alternative providers between them account for just 2,070.
Overall enrolments grew 14 per cent over the past decade, which sounds healthy until you note that the UK figure was 25 per cent. Wales is growing more slowly than the system it sits within, and the gap is widening in several subject areas that matter.
Arguably the most interesting finding isn’t about which subjects are growing or shrinking – it’s about who is studying them. For full-time undergraduate provision, only 39 per cent of enrolments at Welsh providers are Welsh-domiciled. Fifty-one per cent come from the rest of the UK – overwhelmingly England – and 10 per cent from overseas. For full-time postgraduate taught, the picture tilts further – 70 per cent overseas, 19 per cent Welsh, 12 per cent rest of UK.
At subject level, the domicile data shows up something closer to an identity crisis. In economics, only 15 per cent of UCAS acceptances to Welsh providers are Welsh domiciles. In biosciences it’s 23 per cent, chemistry 24 per cent, geography 23 per cent, languages and area studies 23 per cent.
For full-time undergraduate enrolments, subjects including languages, economics, geography, politics, physics and astronomy, and biosciences all draw over 70 per cent of their intake from the rest of the UK. These aren’t courses with a Welsh student body supplemented by cross-border recruitment – they’re courses where Welsh students are a small minority in institutions notionally part of the Welsh system.
The question that raises is whether Welsh providers are functioning as a national system serving Wales or as overflow capacity for English demand. The supply and demand analysis offers a partial answer – for most subject groups, home-fee places at Welsh providers exceed Welsh-domiciled demand. But that surplus is being filled by English students.
Meanwhile, in a handful of subjects, Welsh students who want to stay literally can’t.
Pushed out
Medr’s supply and demand comparison is blunt about where the structural shortfalls lie. Veterinary sciences is the most extreme case – 395 Welsh-domiciled students studying the subject across the UK, against just 10 home-fee places at Welsh providers. That’s 98 per cent excess demand, driven by the straightforward absence of a veterinary school in Wales during the period analysed.
The creative and performing arts subjects tell a more politically uncomfortable story. Creative arts and design shows excess demand of 430 places (14 per cent), music 255 (24 per cent), and other performing arts 250 (28 per cent). These are subjects where Wales has historically had provision but has been withdrawing – full-time undergraduate degree enrolments in the area fell 32 per cent over the decade.
The A-level pipeline is drying up too, with performing arts, art and design, and music completions all trending down. But demand from Welsh students still exceeds what Welsh providers offer, suggesting the problem is provision withdrawal rather than disappearing interest.
Education and teaching shows excess demand of 265 places (13 per cent), which sits oddly alongside UCAS data showing applications and acceptances increasing sharply – the second-largest application increase of any subject group at Welsh providers, at 121 per cent between 2019 and 2024 entry, diverging from the UK picture where education applications fell. Demand exists that provision hasn’t kept pace with.
Vanishing subjects
Beyond the immediate capacity gaps, the trend data shows subjects in long-term decline – and declining faster in Wales than across the UK. Language and area studies has fallen 38 per cent over the decade (against 29 per cent UK-wide), concentrated in a single small provider – Aberystwyth, which accounts for 920 of 4,760 enrolments.
The Common Aggregation Hierarchy (CAH) level 3 breakdown makes it sharper – Italian studies, Slavic studies, African and Middle Eastern studies all show zero enrolments. Modern languages submitted just 126 staff FTE to REF 2021 against 1,615 nationally. If Aberystwyth cuts languages, Wales effectively loses modern foreign language degrees.
Physical sciences declined 38 per cent for full-time undergraduate degree enrolments. Mathematical sciences fell 19 per cent. Here the A-level pipeline data tells a genuinely puzzling story – completions in maths, physics, chemistry, and biology have been relatively stable or only modestly declining over the same period. The HE-level declines aren’t being driven by a disappearing school pipeline in the way that modern foreign languages or performing arts are.
Medr itself speculates that those holding maths and science A-levels may be “more likely to enter higher education outside of Wales”, and lists cross-border flows as an area for future investigation. The implication is significant – Wales is producing the pipeline but losing the students, possibly because Welsh provision in these subjects isn’t perceived as competitive, possibly because there are better-ranked options across the border, possibly because there simply aren’t enough places at the right institutions.
Design, and creative and performing arts declined 24 per cent overall. Here the pipeline story cuts differently – A-level completions in performing arts, art and design, and music have all fallen significantly, feeding a doom loop where fewer completions feed fewer enrolments, which makes provision harder to sustain, which reduces visibility and aspiration, which feeds fewer completions.
Modern foreign languages show the same pattern – French A-level completions have collapsed, Welsh second language has fallen sharply, and these feed directly into the 38 per cent decline in language and area studies at HE level. These are pipeline problems that originate in school-level provision decisions and are partly consequences of curriculum and funding choices made well upstream of HE – but they compound the subject-level fragility that Medr documents.
Too concentrated, too thin
Cardiff holds 33 per cent of all enrolments despite having 13 per cent of the working-age population. Multiple subject groups have over 50 per cent of their enrolments in Cardiff alone – medicine and dentistry, pharmacology, chemistry, mathematical sciences, architecture, economics, politics, media, music, and other performing arts. If you live in North Wales, Mid Wales, or much of South West Wales and want to study any of those face-to-face, you’re looking at relocating.
South East Wales excluding Cardiff is massively underprovided relative to population – 37 per cent of working-age residents, 18 per cent of enrolments. Mid Wales barely exists as an HE destination. North Wales has provision but a narrow subject range. Engineering is concentrated in South West Wales – essentially Swansea – and agriculture in Mid and North Wales (62 per cent).
Provider concentration deepens the fragility – six of nine universities have business and management or subjects allied to medicine as their biggest subject, a sector converging on two areas because they recruit well from England and internationally. Aberystwyth’s biggest subject is language and area studies – the system’s most vulnerable group. Wrexham is nearly a third reliant on business and management alone.
Physical sciences barely exists outside Cardiff and Swansea; mathematical sciences essentially rests on two research-intensive universities plus the Open University (OU). Within computing’s 9,715 enrolments, artificial intelligence accounts for just 265 – 2.9 per cent of UK AI enrolments – which, for a subject every government skills strategy identifies as critical, is a notable gap.
One wrinkle – 11,525 enrolments (8 per cent) are located outside Wales entirely, including the University of Wales Trinity Saint David’s (UWTSD) London and Birmingham campuses and franchise provision in England. More than 10 per cent of enrolments in law, business, languages, philosophy, and media take place outside Wales. Part of the “Welsh provider offer” is geographically exported, thinning out what’s actually available within Welsh borders.
And buried in tables 6 and 7 is a finding that sits uncomfortably alongside Cymraeg 2050. Between 2019/20 and 2023/24, enrolments studying 5+ credits through Welsh fell 9 per cent and 40+ credits fell 10 per cent. Computing Welsh-medium activity fell 83 per cent, business and management 70 per cent for 40+ credits, physical sciences 68 per cent – precisely the subjects associated with economic growth.
Welsh-medium provision is concentrated almost entirely in full-time undergraduate study, with very little at postgraduate level. Even among fluent Welsh speakers, take-up is low – only 7 per cent of fluent Welsh-speaking computing students and 4 per cent of engineering students study any credits through Welsh. The system is moving in the opposite direction from stated policy.
Thin at both ends
For students who can’t relocate – a substantial population in Wales, given the geography, lower average incomes, and caring responsibilities – part-time study is theoretically the escape valve. The OU in Wales accounts for 53 per cent of part-time undergraduate provision. Strip out the OU and face-to-face part-time provision is extremely thin.
Some subjects have grown in part-time mode – psychology (190 per cent increase), social sciences (152 per cent), law (156 per cent) – but others have contracted – engineering part-time undergraduate non-degree fell 48 per cent, education part-time postgraduate taught (PGT) fell 39 per cent.
The part-time route is narrowing in subject range at the same time as face-to-face full-time provision concentrates geographically. And the OU doesn’t provide the campus experience, specialist facilities, or professional placements that facilities-heavy, studio-based, or professionally accredited subjects require.
What Medr doesn’t say
Perhaps the most telling section of the report is Section 6 – “Additional areas to consider for future work.” It reads as a roadmap of known unknowns. Medr flags:
- cross-border flows by subject – why are Welsh students leaving, and where are they going?
- the pipeline from vocational qualifications – not just A-levels – subject choices by personal characteristics – are certain demographic groups more locked out?
- the spread of Welsh-domiciled enrolments relative to potential population, graduate outcomes by subject, and the availability of staff able to teach through the medium of Welsh.
Medr is also explicit that its supply and demand analysis is a crude capacity test – it doesn’t take any account of whether the student’s exact choice of course or type of provider would be available. That caveat does a lot of work.
Even where headline supply meets headline demand, students can be pushed out of Wales because the specialism they want isn’t offered, is offered only at one provider, or is offered in a form they can’t access. “No shortage” at subject-group level isn’t the same as “choice exists.”
And there’s no financial sustainability overlay – no modelling of what happens if declining subjects continue to decline, and no connection to workforce planning or the Welsh economy’s skills needs.
What happens now?
The minister asked for an overview and got one – thorough, meticulously sourced, and almost entirely descriptive. The question is what she does with it.
A data report without a policy response is an expensive act of documentation. And the clock is ticking – every year of further decline in vulnerable subjects makes recovery harder and more expensive, while every year without a cross-border flow analysis leaves the biggest explanatory gap unfilled.
There’s a prior question about who can actually respond. Welsh universities can’t be directed to open or sustain specific programmes. Medr has funding levers (declining in value) and a strategic overview role, but it isn’t clear whether it has, or wants, the directive planning powers that would let it intervene at subject level. Welsh government can set policy priorities and attach conditions to funding, but detailed programme-level steering from ministers would cut against the institutional autonomy the sector jealously guards.
The whole rationale for creating Medr was to replace siloed regulation with a body capable of taking a whole-system view – but taking a view and having the tools to act on it aren’t the same thing. Whether the planning architecture exists to use it is the question nobody seems keen to answer.
There’s a structural question the report never addresses. Many of the problems Medr documents – thin standalone cohorts, unsustainable Welsh-medium provision, narrow local menus – look different if you question whether the single-honours degree model is itself part of the problem. Major/minor structures, credit accumulation across providers, and interdisciplinary programmes could sustain subject breadth without every discipline carrying a viable cohort alone.
Welsh-medium credits could be woven into predominantly English-medium programmes without requiring full parallel degrees. A version of the LLE could theoretically enable this – but Wales has shown little appetite thus far that would make it real. The report’s subject-by-subject framing may inadvertently reinforce the assumption that the answer to fragility is always “more standalone programmes” when it could sometimes be “different programme architecture.”
Several European systems treat this kind of diagnostic data as a trigger for active planning. The Netherlands requires institutions to demonstrate need for new programmes and address overlap – treating subject availability as a national portfolio problem. Denmark has agreed institution-specific intake reductions, steering student places centrally. Finland uses negotiated performance agreements; France makes the national programme map visible through Parcoursup.
The difficulty is that despite a strong “mobility” agenda, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, and French students aren’t routinely crossing into neighbouring jurisdictions with shared fees and frictionless admissions. Welsh students are. This report compares Welsh-domiciled demand against home-fee places at Welsh providers – but “home fee” includes English, Scottish, and Northern Irish students competing for the same places.
Any planning response treating Wales as self-contained will collide with the reality that Welsh HE operates in a UK-wide market where cross-border flows are a feature, not a bug. That makes continental-style programme planning harder to operationalise, though it doesn’t make the diagnostic less relevant.
Several of the findings cry out for a planning response regardless. If creative arts and performing arts show structural excess demand, is there a case for funded provision expansion? If languages are concentrated in a single vulnerable institution, is there a resilience strategy? If Welsh-medium provision is declining in the subjects that matter most for economic growth, does that require targeted funding, a staffing pipeline, or both? If the system is heavily dependent on English student recruitment, what happens when demographics or competitor behaviour change that flow?
Medr’s report doesn’t answer those questions, and it isn’t clear that Medr was asked to. Nor is it clear that it could take on a directive planning role or continue to operate primarily as an information service with funding levers that have increasingly diminishing influence.
What the report does do is make it very difficult for anyone to claim they didn’t know.