New university in Wales opens for 33,000 students

The University of South Wales merges Glamorgan and Newport to become the sixth-largest higher education institute in the country

The University of South Wales

A new metropolitan university 'to rival any in the UK' was launched officially yesterday, the culmination of a lengthy drive to increase collaboration among Welsh universities.

The new University of South Wales will incorporate students from 122 countries and offer more than 580 undergraduate courses, with five campuses including in Cardiff and the Valleys. Officials claim the institution will provide the scale to produce additional benefits for students and the local economy, while also developing a global profile. In response to staff concerns around job security, Julie Lyndon, Vice Chancellor of the new university, claimed this morning that there would not be any compulsory redundancies.

Plans that had included Cardiff Metropolitan University as well as Glamorgan University and the University of Wales, Newport, were abandoned in November 2012, after stern opposition from the former.

The Welsh Education Minister Leighton Andrews said that the University, which will aim particularly to enhance the employability of its graduates, opened "a new chapter in the history of Welsh higher education".