The fall in the number of international students has led Bangor University to place about 200 jobs at risk of redundancy, its vice-chancellor has told staff in an email.
Additional factors behind the layoffs were a rise in costs including the government’s employers’ national insurance rises, which come in on 6 April, according to vice-chancellor Edmund Burke, who added that “unprecedented” changes were needed.
The University of South Wales (USW), which has locations in Cardiff, Newport and Pontypridd, also announced on Wednesday it planned to cut 90 jobs.
Universities across the UK are enduring a financial crisis for the same reasons cited by Bangor, with one in four cutting staff numbers.
At the end of January four universities, including two members of the research-intensive Russell Group of universities, set out a combined 1,000 job losses in response to budget shortfalls.
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Cardiff University is planning to cut 400 jobs, mostly among staff running nursing and humanities courses.
Bangor University has about 10,000 students and about 650 academic staff members, though the voluntary redundancy scheme will be offered to non-academic staff too.
The vice-chancellor said the university aimed to extend the voluntary redundancy scheme, but compulsory redundancies may also be needed.
“These sector-level challenges are very significant for us,” Prof Burke said.
“In autumn 2024, our student intakes were smaller than in 2023, falling short of our budget target. Our home undergraduate intake was 7% smaller and, without medicine, was down 11%.
“Our international intake was also smaller, with our September international postgraduate intake around half the size of the 2023 intake.”
He added in his email to staff that although universities were able to increase fees for incoming students to £9,535 from 2025-26 onwards, “there is no agreement for future inflation adjustment to the amount of money we receive per student”.
He wrote: “UK universities have been increasingly reliant on international income to make up for the shortfall from home fees not increasing by inflation.”
The downturn in international students was caused by visa restrictions announced by the previous government in late 2023 and not reversed under Keir Starmer’s administration.
Bangor staff were invited to a meeting with university bosses on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the proposed changes and had a chance to voice concerns.
Prof Burke added: “Some high-tariff universities appear to have responded to the fall in international student intakes by reducing their entry grades and taking more home students. This has reduced the size of the pool of students coming to other universities.”
To cut costs, the vice-chancellor said the university had already moved staff out of some buildings and these were to be sold.
Cardiff University, meanwhile, has written to 1,800 academic staff at risk of being part of the 400 job losses previously announced.
The university hopes to achieve as much of the cuts as possible through voluntary redundancies.
On Tuesday the minister responsible for higher education in Wales asked universities to “consider all options”, including using financial reserves, to prevent job losses.
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