Higher education in Wales is not taking the Welsh language seriously and is putting its survival at risk, Richard Wyn Jones, director of the Institute of Welsh Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, said this week. "The lack of Welsh-medium provision in the universities has the effect of confirming the second-rate status of the language," he said in a lecture to the National Eisteddfod. The Welsh Assembly wanted 7 per cent of Welsh students to get some teaching in Welsh by 2010, but the proportion has fallen since 1996 to about 3 per cent in 2002.