Politics

Protection for science and research spending will be maintained in 2015-16 while the capital budget will be increased to £1.1 billion, the chancellor George Osborne announced today.

The National Scholarship Programme is to be cut by £100 million and made postgraduate-only, as part of savings announced in the coalition’s spending round.

The capital budget for science will be increased to £1.1 billion in 2015-16 and maintained in real terms until the end of the decade, the chancellor George Osborne has announced.

Leighton Andrews, the Welsh education minister who drove through controversial university mergers, has been forced to resign his position

A decision by the House of Commons Education Committee to launch an inquiry into the government’s flagship policy for recruiting teachers has been welcomed by a higher education group.

The coalition’s aim to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands” by 2015 makes more than half of international students in the UK feel less welcome, according to a new survey.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has reached a settlement with the Treasury in negotiations over the 2015-16 spending review, reports suggest

Sources say switch of medical education and research budgets to Department of Health increasingly unlikely

Medical research charities want funding protected in spending review

Martin McQuillan warns of a possible Manhattan Project for the sector

US politics is not keen on the theoretical, Alan Ryan discovers

Minister wins fans for affirming value of data

NUS’ outgoing leader tells John Morgan that v‑cs and Russell Group must press the sector’s case to government

No such thing as higher education sector, PA Consulting poll hears

Student protests brought down a government but failed to freeze tuition fees: what’s next for a province where universities remain high on the political agenda? Elizabeth Gibney reports from Montreal

Cuts to widening participation funds anticipated to meet spending review targets

Scientific research in the UK has been harmed by the current spending freeze, a report has claimed

Vince Cable, the business secretary, says he has “ruled out categorically” any rise in interest rates for graduates who took out student loans before 2012, while stressing that plans for a sale of student loans are ongoing

The Queen’s Birthday Honours List includes a knighthood for Eric Thomas, the University of Bristol vice-chancellor and Universities UK president

The government should urgently clarify its plans for the sale of the student loan book and reassure existing graduates that their repayments will not be raised, according to Labour’s shadow higher education minister.

Science ministers from the G8 group of the world’s richest countries have jointly endorsed the need to increase access to publicly-funded research.

The education secretary’s attacks on the academy are a smokescreen for the damage caused by his radical policies, argues Martin McQuillan

Just four European countries spend less as a proportion of national income

IPPR report offers stark warning over £6,000 plans

Convention for Higher Education’s rallying cry against coalition’s university reforms

House of Lords event hears how council and the scholars it has saved have enriched the UK

Woolwich murder reignites debate over university radicalisation

Teacher-turned-scholar Jon Berry sends a message to the education minister on the theory behind best practice

The banning of psychoactive drugs amounts to one of the worst cases of scientific censorship in modern times, researchers have argued.

Labour’s shadow business secretary is “open” to setting a target to increase overseas students if the party returns to power as the major export industry has been “taken hostage by the Home Office” under the coalition.

By Elizabeth Redden, for Inside Higher Ed

The Home Office has concluded that the student visitor route into the UK is being used as intended and not as a back door route to work or settlement

Ministers should extend student loans to many more part-time students to remedy a “crisis” in recruitment, a thinktank commission is set to recommend

George Osborne has given his strongest hint yet that science funding will be protected in the coming spending review

Business secretary will argue against sector cuts and for extra investment

Mayor confident in capital’s academic brand values

The academy must repel UKIP’s charges, argues Christopher Phelps

Minister and BIS take close interest in study with enormous policy implications

Fewer British universities are hitting their overseas student recruitment targets this year in the wake of the government’s visa changes and Indian student numbers have again been hit, according to Universities UK.

A student Islamic society has apologised after a video was posted on its Facebook site claiming the killing of a soldier in Woolwich was a government hoax.

Moving medical education and research funding to the Department of Health would “pose a significant threat to the UK’s leading position” in the fields, medical schools have warned George Osborne.

By Scott Jaschik, for Inside Higher Ed

Tuition fees major concern for schoolchildren, Sutton Trust discovers

G. R. Evans’ rallying cry: scholars, do the spadework to defend the sector

Russell Group’s latest members have agreed to stump up £500,000 each

Plans to cut student support may be undermined by court ruling

When anthropologists pointed out that cultural factors impeded tropical disease treatment campaigns, some fellow scientists reacted with outrage

Vince Cable has said any sense of “triumph” over new figures showing a decline in student immigration is “absurd”, as he issued a strong defence of international student movement

Call to put differences aside, ahead of UCU Congress in Brighton

Stay-at-home students who attend a local university should be eligible for cut-price tuition fees of £5,000 a year, according to an influential commission of higher education experts

The University of Greenwich has launched an investigation into whether there has been extremism on its campuses after confirming that one of the suspects in the murder of a British soldier studied at the institution

Net migration to the UK has fallen again mainly thanks to a 23 per cent drop in the number of students coming to the country to study.

Lowering tuition fees to £6,000 – a policy put forward by Labour - could cost the Treasury the same as the current £9,000 set-up, a study has claimed.

Less than 10 years since their introduction, tuition fees will soon disappear from the country. Frances Mechan-Schmidt reports

£9,000 limit poses threat to quality and income, conference hears

Brighton event aims to form charter of core university values

Treatment to avoid cuts would do more harm than good, critics say

Alastair Bonnett visits Lincoln’s Social Science Centre, a cooperative, free university attempting to build a different kind of knowledge economy

A new website has been launched to help universities tackle violent extremism and radicalisation on campus.

A campaign has been launched to promote part-time study following the dramatic fall in the number of such students choosing to enter higher education.