Following the proposals from last year, Wendy Larner, Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff University, has spoken out about her struggles from the backlash she’s received from the public on the university’s redundancies and the misinformation that was shared online.

Although, Cardiff University’s proposals changed during the consultation process. In January 2025, the institution announced 400 academic redundancies were to necessary but this was later reduced to 138, planning to be carried out over a span of a few years.

The voluntary severance scheme saw 133 staff members leaving. Schools including nursing, music, and modern languages were no longer under heavy threat of closing courses. However, the Annual Report and Financial Statements found that The Voluntary Severance and Voluntary Redundancy Scheme from last year cost more than £24m to deliver in 2024/25.

Throughout last year's stresses, Wendy Larner had reached a low until something unexpected occurred. According to The Times Higher Education, Wendy Larner was met with a positive exchange at her doorstep after facing scrutiny over the board’s recent decisions.

Her neighbour, a Cardiff graduate, approached the Vice Chancellor after listening to his daughter’s request of inviting her over to play with toys. He offered his own support by opening a sincere conversation with her telling Larner ‘I know you’ve had a really hard week...here’s a bottle of wine.’

Touched by the moment, Larner shared ‘I’m never going to forget that [conversation] I almost cried on him.’ She went on to say, ‘that understanding and sympathy – not for me, but for what we were going through as a university – was something that I heard over and over again.’

Larner spoke to Gair Rhydd in November of last year on the media coverage of the Academic Futures process and the misinformation that was shared online. She reassured that it will be ‘actively monitored where a Joint Working Group will be in place between senior leadership and the unions will be managing it – as well as we can – during a very stressful time.’

The scrutiny that Larner faced increased to a drastic level of negativity. A transcript of comments she made in 2018 about epigenetics were revealed where she had suggested poverty may be caused by genetics. Larner cleared the confusion and stated that her words had been ‘grossly and wilfully misinterpreted.’

She stated, ‘it is not easy to have your personal integrity impugned in the way that my personal integrity was,’ she said. “While I was prepared for that, I wasn’t prepared for some of the more outrageous commentary, and I remain appalled by that.’

‘It was quite extraordinary to me: both the opinions that you saw in the media, but also the number of people who just came up quietly to me in the street or in the supermarket, let alone on campus, saying, ‘Look, I know what you’re doing is really hard, but I also know that it has to be done because we really need Cardiff University to be successful,’ she said.

‘I would not read a few loud voices as being representative of the wider discussion. It was hard; everyone understood it was hard. It was deeply emotional; these are people’s lives. But don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.’