British universities will see funding drop by £200 million in the first wave of budget cuts under a new coalition government. Today, George Osborne, the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer and David Laws the Liberal Democratic chief treasury secretary jointly announced £6.2 billion in immediate cuts to government spending. Universities will see a modernisation fund slashed by £118 million, and a further £82 million will come from across-the-board cuts to spending.

The government also rearranged some £233 million for the planned UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation. Rather than providing the money up front, the government says it will allocate funding on a year-by-year basis as needed.

That won’t necessarily cause problems for the roughly half-billion-pound research centre planned for North London, but clearly people are nervous. I counted some variation of the phrase “We welcome the Government’s support for the UKCMRI” no less than six times in an e-mail from the UKCMRI consortium earlier this afternoon—a reminder to Laws and Osborne that they have pledged to support the project.

Others are disappointed by the decision to cut university funding. Universities UK warned of “a valley of death in funding” as a result of the budget cuts, while Imran Khan, the director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering said the organization was “”https://www.sciencecampaign.org.uk/press/releases/2010/CaSEPRMayCuts2010.pdf">surprised and disappointed" by the announcement of the cuts.

It should be said that direct research funding has been spared for the time being. But there’s a strong possibility of cuts to come. In his first press briefing on 18 May, David Willetts, the Conservative minster for universities and science told reporters: “I understand the value of science but there is a cash constraint on what we can afford.”