New report calls for action to reverse haemorrhaging of part-time students

Following a decade of slow decline, the numbers of students recruited to undergraduate part-time courses in England plummeted 40% in two years (2010-11 to 2012-13): equivalent to 105,000 fewer students. According to the report, The power of part-time from Universities UK, indications for 2013-14 are that the level of decline will not be stemmed. Most part-timers are mature, studying vocational subjects, and are in full-time employment.

UCU today said the report laid bare its main concern that after a three-fold increase in tuition fees in 2012, the majority (70%) of part-time students are deemed ineligible to take out the new loan so have to find thousands of pounds to pay upfront. This came after a new rule introduced in 2007 put restrictions on loans for part-timers studying equivalent or lower qualifications to those they already possessed. Although this has now been relaxed for students on some designated courses, it still applies to the majority.

There is evidence that in the current recession, employers are less able or less willing to pay for the full cost of their employees' education and training*.  The net result is that the UK is less able to rely on part-time education to upskill the population.

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'Part-time learners in employment are rightly described in this report as 'the powerhouse for the new skills base'. Yet these are the people who have faced insurmountable financial obstacles to further learning, forcing them to abandon education in their droves.

'Firstly, they were told if they wanted to learn at a level they had already studied at or below, they had to pay out their own pockets. But the killer blow was the three-fold increase in tuition fees, when the majority of them are denied access to government loans.

'This has all happened during a recession when family budgets have been squeezed and employers have tightened their belts, making it all too easy to predict part-timers' haemorrhaging from education. We could begin to undo some of this damage by making tuition fee loans available to allpart-time students, followed by a major push to get the message out there that continuing education is a realistic aspiration for working adults.'

* Futuretrack: part-time higher education students three years on - their experiences of studying and the benefits of learning. Callender and Wilkinson (2012)