ANY higher education cuts in today’s emergency Budget will mean less choice for students and could cost jobs, academics have warned.

Staff at Essex University, which has a campus in Southend, were braced for bad news with Chancellor George Osborne expected to announce reduced spending on further and higher education.

They have already been making their feelings known by holding a demonstration to protest over the potential impact of reductions.

Members of the University and College Union were joined by branch officials from Unite, which represents university support staff, as they campaigned yesterday on campus.

Bob Watt, the University and College Union’s vice-president at Essex, said further and higher education had already weathered £6billion of spending cuts and more would be too much.

He said: “We are worried it will mean fewer places for students at university next year and we are particularly worried members of staff will be made redundant.”

Mr Watt added cuts would affect not only lecturers, but also hundreds of others, such as administrators, guards and cleaners.

He said: “Already we are very short of cleaning staff and support staff and at other universities which have been worse hit by previous cuts than Essex, it has affected all staff groups.”

The university is in a better position than others to survive cuts as it attracts a high number of foreign students, who pay higher fees than UK undergraduates.Students from abroad would be unaffected by mooted plans to further increase student tuition fees.

However, computer science lecturer Stephen Sangwine, who is on the union’s national executive, said: “You can’t run the universijust on foreign students.

“It would be unattractive for them if the whole place was full of foreign students, because they would have no native speakers to talk to.”