Cardiff University Vice Chancellor cut jobs in New Zealand before moving to Wales

Martin Shipton

Cardiff University Vice Chancellor Wendy Larner, who is presiding over a hugely controversial cuts proposal, was part of a senior management team that pushed through similar cuts at the university in New Zealand where she worked before relocating to Wales.

Academics and trade unionists from Victoria University of Wellington have been in touch with members of the University and College Union (UCU) at Cardiff to offer solidarity and share information about Professor Larner’s record in New Zealand, where she was involved in two rounds of cuts.

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Upset

One wrote saying: “Dear colleagues, I was upset to read the news of these proposed job cuts at Cardiff, and wanted to send a message of solidarity from Victoria University in New Zealand.

“I [went] through two rounds of job cuts and austerity, with Wendy Larner in the senior leadership team at the time. To see the same words and justifications repeated for cuts, almost word for word, in a different country but from the same figure is particularly galling.

“These cuts would be bad for Wales, your students and Higher Education across Britain. We wish you every success in opposing them and the destructive, narrow view of your Vice Chancellor.

“She was excellent at talking a very big, expansive (and, in hindsight, strategically vague) language of diversity, equity, inclusion, distinctiveness, universities as critical sites etc. And, under it, the usual cut-throat neoliberal logic.

“The proposals for 'global' studies that gut languages at Cardiff happened here, almost word for word, in 2023. The initial talk of the funding model being 'in crisis' too, led then to internally-focussed cuts.

“We stand in solidarity with you about this and I’m so appalled by the sheer scale of what is being proposed.”

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'Toxic'

A podcast made by students at Victoria University in 2023 about the cuts the university was facing referred to a “disastrous” online enrolment project championed by Prof Larner.

A presenter of the podcast referred to “toxic and dysfunctional mismanagement” at the university, adding: “One of the main examples of mismanagement was the new enrolments programme that they were trying to push. They were relying on enrolments to make enough money for the university to survive. So this new enrolment programme was [introduced], but it seemed to be just a flop.

“Wendy Larner, a member of the university’s senior leadership team, was the architect of this new programme, and she championed it through, [saying] that it would increase enrolments, but it was buggy and hard to use, and students claimed it took days to enrol properly, and you could only go there after spending hours on the phone with university support,

“We don’t know the exact numbers of how many students didn’t enrol because of the issues with the system … but we know there has been a 12% drop in students. Notably Wendy Larner has announced she’s resigning from the university to become Vice Chancellor at some other university in the UK [Cardiff]. It’s all been a bit of a disaster.”

Dr Dougal McNeill, co-president of Victoria University’s branch of New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Union, told the podcast: “Inside our institution these [cuts] didn’t happen in a vacuum. They were caused by individuals. We have seen - and it’s been publicly documented over the last four or five years - a pattern of toxic and dysfunctional mismanagement that is connected very clearly to the situation we’re in now.

“None of the people involved have taken responsibility. They’ve moved on to higher paid roles elsewhere.”

Earlier, a multi-million dollar project aimed at improving students’ experience at Victoria University was criticised by external auditors after delays and a lack of clear outcomes.

The Student Success Project, an overhaul of IT systems, cost the university $16.7m from 2013 to the beginning of 2020.

Another $6m was budgeted for the project in the following two years.

Victoria University sought help from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) after recognising a large amount of money had been spent with a lack of clarity of the project’s outcomes, technological difficulties and high staff turnover hampering the project.

The project had already undergone a reset in 2018, due to a lack of student voices. The PwC report, released in January 2023, stated in the 18 months prior to its release, the project had failed to deliver anything “operationally tangible”.

“The past has not worked,” said the report.

By 2020 the university had written off $1.6m, but the PwC report identified another $3.4m as being at risk of write-off.

It had 10 recommendations for the university, all of which have now been implemented, including working with an external partner to complete the project.

Comfortable

Victoria University provost Wendy Larner said she was comfortable with the spend, telling New Zealand media outlets: “Our students are at the heart of our business, we should be spending on them, and supporting them more effectively. It sounds like a big number, but you have to remember how many years it is over.

“I know this was a difficult decision for the university council and the senior leadership team, it was one we chewed over very thoroughly, but in the end we are all agreed that it is really important that we invest for the future.”

Dr McNeill told Nation.Cymru: “We have been following what is happening at Cardiff with distress from afar. It is a totally unnecessary attack on a major university and, for us, all of the lines are so familiar. When Wendy Larner was part of the senior leadership at Victoria University of Wellington, during a time of similar pushes to restructure and threats of widespread job cuts, 88% of staff surveyed did not trust the senior leadership. That breakdown in trust, and a deep sense that the leadership behaved in ways that were contemptuous towards staff, was reported [in the New Zealand media] at the time.”

As Vice Chancellor at Cardiff University, Prof Larner is paid a salary of £290,000 per year.

A Cardiff University spokesperson said: “Professor Wendy Larner is currently in New Zealand attending a memorial service for her father who died two weeks ago while she was in Cardiff. She will therefore not be offering comment.

“It would be inappropriate for Cardiff University to comment on decisions made at another university.

“The difficulties facing universities in Wales, the UK and globally are well documented. At the time of Prof Larner’s appointment as Vice Chancellor, the panel was aware of the reported challenges faced by Victoria University, and of her significant management experience in Bristol and New Zealand. She was appointed, unanimously, by the panel.

“We have nothing further to add and will not be commenting on the ongoing and increasingly personal attacks directed towards Wendy.”