Top universities have warned that they could be “brought to their knees” if the government goes ahead with its proposal to cut up to £2.5 billion in funding.

The cuts were announced last month by Alistair Darling in his pre-budget report, which unveiled plans to slash £600 million from university budgets by 2013. This is in addition to the £398 million in cuts projected for 2010-2011, in the form of “efficiency savings” and “budget reductions” which were announced by Lord Mandelson last year.

The government also revealed plans to see more degrees completed over two years rather than three as a way of easing the funding crisis and to broaden education to a wider range of students.

The Russell Group, which represents 20 leading universities, has strongly criticized the government’s intentions. Wendy Piatt, the group’s director, and Michael Arthur, its chair, said in a joint statement that “it has taken more than 800 years to create one of the world’s greatest education systems, and it looks like it will take just six months to bring it to its knees.”

Piatt and Arthur argue that the cuts will “not only have a devastating effect on students and staff, but will jeopardize precious research and resources, which will impact both Britain’s national economy and ability to overcome the recession.”

Resistance to Labour’s plans for university funding has been particularly strong at Cambridge, as exemplified by more Cambridge students attending the national demonstration against top up fees in March 2009 than from any other institution.

CUSU has also spoken out against cuts in funding. In a recent report on Funding and Access, CUSU argued that Labour’s intentions “would damage the University’s commitment to seeking the best students regardless of background, greatly increase student debt levels, and represent a retrograde step in Higher Education provision.”

CUSU also believes that cuts would lower morale, cause difficulty in retaining staff, and endanger the university’s international competitiveness. According to recent rankings, Cambridge is second only to Harvard on a global scale. In all, 18 British universities are in the top 100.

Opponents of funding cuts are concerned that as the government has announced these plans, other nations are handsomely endowing their own institutions. Recent investments in higher education of €11bn (£9.8bn) in France, €18bn (£16bn) in Germany, and $21bn (£13bn) in the United States threaten to jeopardize Britain’s current international status.

However, George Owers, President of Cambridge University Labour Club, disagrees that Labour’s plans will have such a dramatic impact on UK universities. He contends that the Russell Group’s attack “bears little resemblance to reality”, stating that the government’s plans represent a reshuffle rather than dramatic cuts in funding.

According to Owers, “In order to cope with the difficult position the public finances are in, the government has prioritized, indeed increased, spending on teaching and put on hold expensive capital projects.”

These views were echoed by David Zeichner, Labour parliamentary candidate from Cambridge, who discarded the Russell Group’s claim as a “massive misrepresentation of the facts.”

In a press release on university funding last week, Zeichner argued that the £2.5bn figure was “very misleading”, as it was based on future projections and ignored both overall spending by universities and increased funding for teaching.

David Lammy, Britain’s higher education minister, concurred. He admitted “we are minimizing the effect on the frontline by making savings on capital budgets”, but emphasized that the changes “will not impact on teaching”.

Lammy went on to state that “we maintain our commitment to the importance of higher education precisely because we know how essential its success is to opportunity and to our successful future economic growth.”