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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.