Wales needs a federal university.
The vision that established the University of Wales was strategically sound in 1893, and the issue of making the best use of inevitably limited resources to create a world-class university via a geographically distributed set of small collaborating institutions remains as valid today as then.
The challenge that faces the members of the Welsh National Assembly is whether they can cut through the bull to meet the stature of the Welsh thinkers who worked so diligently to turn the tide of a much earlier, but equally neglectful, English central government.
If they see this, however, they need to provide a basis for a true federalism in which the authority of the national university is not susceptible to the machinations of a few powerful, individual institutions.
Andrew Morgan
Swansea