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Universities win £1bn extra funding

UK higher education funding is to be boosted by £1 billion over the next three years.

The Department for Education and Employment is expected to announce today that total higher education funding will be £6.4 billion in 2003-04. Total funding for the current year (2000-01) is £5.4 billion.

In announcing the cash, Mr Blunkett is to promise that there will be no fall in funding per student over the next three years.

Total recurrent funding - largely for teaching - for this year is £4.4 billion. Science funding was boosted by £1 billion in the summer spending review, bringing total higher education funding to £5.4 billion for this year and £5.8 billion for the next.

The announcement will come as a relief for universities, which had been waiting to find out how much extra they were to receive from the spending review in 2002-03 and 2003-04.

The sector had only been told the settlement for 2001-02 - the first year covered by the spending review - when it was given an extra £100 million, meaning the higher education budget for 2001-02 (£5.8 million) will be £395 million higher than this year’s budget.