First of the 2014/15 emergency cuts announced

Times Higher Education reports that Willetts made a ministerial statement yesterday announcing the decision to bring forward by a year the planned changes to the National Studentship Programme. The summer’s Spending Round for 2015/16 had earmarked cuts their and the wholesale transformation of the programme. Changes will now be seen in 2014/15 in order to save £75million.

This change required Nick Clegg’s ‘sign-off’ as the creation of the NSP was a concession granted to Liberal Democrats to keep them on-board through the vote on raising the maximum tuition fee in December 2010.

Universities now have to revise their Access Agreements for next year.

This is the first in a series of emergency measures designed to locate £570m of savings from the department’s budget. For more on what’s to come,  see this column for the Guardian.

Update 2 December

Details of how these cuts affect individual colleges and universities here. Note these cuts sum to £100m because £25m is being put towards a ‘one-off’ collaborative outreach initiative.