ARE we betraying a generation of young students, or is the academic world of colleges coming to terms finally with the realities of the recent financial crisis?

As this paper reports today, most colleges in the city region face having to make cutbacks to cope with reductions in funding from central Government.

In some cases this means lecturers will be lost, in others support staff will go. Other colleges have managed to avoid making redundancies but say the cost-cutting has led to changes in the way they can deliver education to students.

Nowhere in the academic world is there support for the changes, which is hardly surprising.

What is eyebrow-raising is the anger towards the cuts from Eastleigh Liberal Democrat MP Mike Thornton, who breaks ranks with his party in coalition Government to condemn the reductions.

The Department of Education, however, says the reductions affect only a fifth of students and are necessary to bring colleges into line with spending on schools.

That is small comfort for those colleges and students facing cutbacks, but is it a lesson in financial reality, or has the Government got the answers to this difficult question wrong this time?