Our Universities, Our Future: An AI Vision for a Fairer Wales

The integration of Al in higher education presents opportunities and challenges for Wales. Here, Dr Geraint Davies and Dr Tim Burton, former senior lecturers at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, examine these dynamics and emphasise the need for collaboration

- 

We have institutions that shape the identity and wellbeing of entire regions.

Our challenge is not a lack of quality. It is a lack of coherence.

‘The sector was never designed as a unified whole. It emerged organically - sometimes accidentally, often heroically, but rarely strategically. That is not a criticism; it is simply our story. But history is not destiny, and the meaning we draw from that history - how we interpret it and how we use it - can and often does change.

The Medr Moment: Coherence at Last

With the creation of the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research - Medr - Wales is about to do something unprecedented: build the first fully integrated post-16 education system in the UK. Done well, it could become one of the most coherent in Europe. Medr’s task is nothing less than to knit together:

schools;

further education colleges;

apprenticeships;

universities;

research ecosystems;

lifelong learning;

regional skills planning.

This is ambitious. But it is exactly what Wales needs. Learners should not have to navigate a maze of incompatible qualifications and funding rules. Further and higher education should not operate in silos. Research should not depend on chance. And Wales should not be shaping its future workforce in isolation from its wider economic strategy.

Done well, Medr could transform everything:

creating clear, accessible lifelong learning pathways;

integrating FE and HE into a single skills ecosystem;

aligning qualifications with regional and national priorities;

enabling flexible, modular, step-on/step-off learning;

strengthening research capacity and collaboration;

simplifying the learner journey for people at every stage of life