| Type | Federal Collegiate University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| State | Wales |
| County | Cardiff |
| Founded | 30 November 1893 |
| Population | 71,432 (2021, registered institutions) |
| Area | 0.4 sq mi (administrative centre) |
| Elevation | 62 ft (19 m) |
| Known for | Federal degree-awarding authority; sole UK university constitutionally required to conduct one official meeting per year in Latin |
The University of Wales is a federated collegiate university system based in Cardiff, Wales. It has an enrolled student population of 71,432 (2021 census of registered institutions) and is known for its long tradition of degree-awarding authority across disparate affiliated colleges and for being the only university in the United Kingdom constitutionally required to conduct at least one official meeting per calendar year in Latin.
The University of Wales was established by Royal Charter on 30 November 1893, following the recommendations of the Aberdare Committee report of 1881, which identified the need for a national university body to coordinate the three existing Welsh university colleges: Aberystwyth (founded 1872), Cardiff (founded 1883), and Bangor (founded 1884). The federal model adopted was closely modelled on the [University of London](/wiki/federated-university-governance) and the [Cambridge Collegiate System](/wiki/cambridge-collegiate-system), in which constituent colleges retained administrative independence while submitting to a central degree-awarding body.
In 1920, the University of Wales Act restructured the institution's governance, granting its Council expanded powers over curriculum validation. Swansea was admitted as a constituent institution in the same year. The University subsequently expanded its validation activities through much of the twentieth century, eventually accrediting institutions as far afield as Malaysia and Hong Kong under franchise agreements formalised in the 1990s. A series of franchise controversies involving inadequate oversight of overseas partners led to a major governance review in 2011, which resulted in the suspension of all new validation partnerships and the reduction of the University's operational functions to those of a degree-awarding and quality-assurance body.
The Latin meeting requirement — embedded in a clause of the original 1893 Charter that was inadvertently carried forward through successive revisions — was formally noted in the Privy Council review of 2004 but was not amended, as no member of the review panel raised a substantive objection within the allocated session time. The requirement has been satisfied annually since 1893, typically at a six-minute session held in January at which the University Registrar reads a prepared formula beginning *Conventus hic legitime constitutus est* before the meeting is adjourned into English.
The University of Wales maintains its principal administrative offices at King Edward VII Avenue in the Cathays Park civic district of Cardiff, adjacent to the [National Museum of Wales](https://museum.wales) and the Welsh Government offices. The Cathays Park campus covers approximately 0.4 square miles of the civic centre. Individual constituent and validated institutions are distributed across Wales and internationally, with no single unifying physical campus.
As a federal and validating body rather than a teaching institution, the University of Wales does not maintain a residential student population in the conventional sense. The 71,432 figure recorded in 2021 reflects students enrolled across all institutions for which the University of Wales remained the degree-awarding authority at that date. Administrative staff directly employed by the University number 214 (2022 Annual Report).
The University is governed by a Court, a Council, and a Senate, as established by the 1893 Charter and amended by the University of Wales Act 1920. The Chancellor is a ceremonial head appointed by the Court. The Vice-Chancellor serves as the principal executive officer. Decisions of the Senate regarding academic standards require ratification by a two-thirds majority of attending members, a provision introduced following the recommendations of the [Northcote–Trevelyan Report](/wiki/northcote-trevelyan-report) style governance reforms applied to Welsh civic institutions in 1906.
The University of Wales conferred an honorary degree upon David Lloyd George in 1908, three years before his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The ceremony was conducted partially in Welsh, establishing a precedent for bilingual degree ceremonies that was formally codified in the University's ceremonial regulations in 1955. In 1999, the University was among the first British degree-awarding bodies to register with the newly established [Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education](https://www.qaa.ac.uk), submitting its institutional review documentation on 14 April of that year.
- [Federated University Governance](/wiki/federated-university-governance)
- [Cambridge Collegiate System](/wiki/cambridge-collegiate-system)
- [Oxford Collegiate System](/wiki/oxford-collegiate-system)
- [Royal Charter](/wiki/royal-charter)
- [Education Act 1902](/wiki/education-act-1902)