Oh Mandy, you came and you took without giving…

Unfortunately, the Guardian's editorial agrees with my gloomy prognostications about education funding. If anyone can think of an institution more vulnerable, do let me know. All this on top of a massive fine and managerial stupidity…

The decision to protect research funding, maintaining a pledge which Gordon Brown gave in 2004, means the impact of the cuts will be concentrated on capital spending and on teaching. In plain English, it is teachers and students who will suffer most.

Now that the tap is being turned off again, the threat of a return to the pre-1997 regime is grave, and will become more so as the likely long restraint of spending continues. The most immediate victims of Labour's stop-go policies, however, are young people. There will be fewer students in 2010 than in 2009 and they will each command fewer resources than their predecessors. Universities' overdependence on foreign students' fees means that UK undergraduates will bear the brunt. 

Universities face a grim choice. They must either turn students away or look after their needs less well – perhaps both. That means larger classes and less tuition in a system already fraying at the edges.

Universities with little research funding will be particularly squeezed. Courses and colleges are in danger. All these pressures mean participation will be narrowed, and that fairer access – another Labour success story – is put at further risk, while social mobility is suddenly a luxury for another day. The university cuts graphically illustrate the wider truth that waste savings only go so far. Real cuts hurt. These ones are real all right. And there are more to come.