"Grants cut over funding blunder"

Shock, horror, yawn. Gummint can't do its own sums properly.

As ever, there's a simple solution to this. Bung in all existing student grants and subsidies with the welfare system generally, and pay students (however rich or poor their parents may be) the same Citizen's Income as any other adult in that age group*, set for sake of argument at current JSA/IS rates of about £48 per week. Administration costs, delayed payments and fraud would be slashed as this would effectively be Child Benefit but at a slightly higher rate.

And as this would also get rid of any financial incentive to remaining unemployed rather than studying, or vice versa, we would also be more likely to have the "correct" number of people going into full time education, whatever that number is.

There. That's that fixed.

* Where I differ from the CIT booklet is that I'd give people a choice: either claim the CI and pay flat rate tax on all your income; or waive the CI and claim a tax-free personal allowance of about £10,000 instead, that's just details.