March 19, 2020
A message from Professor Cara Aitchison, President and Vice-Chancellor
"At Cardiff Met we take pride in being a values-driven University where we put the wellbeing of our students, staff and community first. As we combat the global pandemic of Covid-19 (the Coronavirus) it is more important than ever that we apply our ethical values to every decision we make.
This is why we have made a series of decisions and commitments to our students, staff and wider community to help provide as much clarity and reassurance as we can at this worrying time.
Clearly, we have a duty to maintain the sustainability of the University in the long term, but equally we realise how disruptive the current situation is for students and staff.
Whilst the economic impact of Covid-19 will be widely felt, and Cardiff Met will feel this too, our careful, strategic management of the University over the last few years means that we are able to offer support right now, where we feel it is needed most.
In addition to moving rapidly to on-line learning and assessment for our students, reconfiguring our student support for on-line delivery and enabling most of our staff to work from home, we have made the following key decisions in the past few days:
- Ensuring that all staff, whether they have permanent, fixed term or zero-hours contracts, are paid in full over the coming months, even if they are unable to attend the University.
- Ensuring that payments to sub-contractors will be made as normal, to enable them to pay regular wages to their staff, such as all of our University cleaners
- Not taking any payment for University-run student accommodation after April if students have vacated accommodation and choose to stay at home.
- Alleviating the stress and uncertainty for Home/EU applicants, replacing conditional offers for Cardiff Met with an unconditional offer for 2020-entry.
We will continue to be as responsive and supportive as we can with our decision making and communication.
This is clearly a worrying time for students and staff, and it is important that we continue to work together as ‘One Cardiff Met’, albeit at a physical distance, to support each other during this challenging time.
Professor Cara Aitchison
President and Vice-Chancellor
