One architect of government policy on support for part-timers admits the result has been a ‘catastrophe’ for universities and students

As Claire Gray scans her customers’ shopping at the checkout in Waitrose in Wells, Somerset, she is imagining her future as a lawyer. In October, Gray, 46, will start juggling a part-time law degree at the Open University alongside her supermarket job. “I’m a bit nervous about studying,” she admits. “But I can’t wait to get started. This is me taking control of my future.”

Gray worked hard at school and sixth-form college, and was set to join the air force as an officer when she learned she had a degenerative spinal condition that means she has to walk with a stick. Later, as a single parent, she couldn’t find a way to juggle work, study and childcare. “Getting a degree is something I’ve wanted for a long time,” she says. “Now I’m taking out a loan to pay for my fees, which is daunting, but if I don’t do this before I retire I’ll be sorry.”

Gray is exactly the sort of person the government says it wants to tempt back to university and into a fulfilling career. In February, the universities minister, Jo Johnson, announced the introduction of two-year fast-track degrees as part of the higher education bill. He said then that students, especially mature ones, were “crying out for more flexible courses, modes of study which they can fit around work and life”.

But despite the rhetoric, part-time student numbers are plummeting, which experts believe is down to a lack of financial support from the government. The latest figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show that part-time student numbers in England have fallen 56% since 2010. Numbers have been declining for a decade, but fell from 243,355 in 2010-11 to just 107,325 in 2015-16.

The major problems began in 2012, when the government raised the cap on part-time fees to £6,750 a year. It has since tried to address this crisis by improving financial support for some part-time students by introducing maintenance loans. But experts say this has not gone nearly far enough.

The fall in demand means universities are quietly closing their part-time courses. “The Russell Group has pretty much pulled out of part-time undergraduate education,” says Claire Callender, professor of higher education policy at Birkbeck University, which specialises in part-time education.

These course closures matter more for part-time students than full-time ones, says Callender, because most part-timers are juggling a job or a family, or both, and so need to study near home. “Lack of local provision won’t mean they will try studying somewhere else; they just won’t study at all,” she says.

Callender warns that once universities have stopped offering part-time courses the tap can’t simply be switched back on. “Once universities lose the infrastructure it’s hard to reinstate it.”

The Open University, which solely delivers distance learning and relies on older, employed learners, such as Gray, as its bread and butter, has been hit especially hard, with its numbers falling by 30% between 2010-11 and 2015-16.

Prof Peter Horrocks, its vice-chancellor, says the institution has had to close seven of its nine regional offices, and there will be more cuts to come. He understands why some universities might turn their backs on this market. “I think most have tried to keep their courses going, but as they get less and less economic with fewer people going, inevitably some courses elsewhere are folding,” he says.

“By our calculations, over the part-time finance policy changes in the last 10 years, roughly 400,000 people who have not studied part-time have been lost to higher education. That’s 400,000 opportunities for people to improve themselves and help the economy.”

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Part-time enrolments in England hit the floor in 2012 when the government raised the cap on part-time fees, doubling or even tripling the cost of many courses. To counter this, the government extended loans for tuition fees to part-timers, who previously hadn’t been eligible to apply. But Callender’s research shows that about two-thirds of would-be part-time students were not eligible for this support, often because they were studying a more bite-size course, or already had a degree.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nick Hillman, former special adviser, now says: ‘We didn’t understand how few part-time students would be entitled to those loans.’ Photograph: None

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute thinktank, and at that time special adviser to the then-universities minister David Willetts, now admits this was a mistake. “We didn’t understand how few part-time students would actually be entitled to those loans,” he says.

The institute recently published a study into what Hillman now calls the part-time “catastrophe”. He adds: “People used to say part-timers should be treated the same as full-time students pro-rata and everything would be OK. But most experts now say part-time students are different. They are at a different stage in their lives. They are more debt-averse. So it is probable that you actually need to be more generous with part-time students.”

Last November the government announced that from 2018 it would offer maintenance loans, to help cover living and travel costs, to part-time learners. But Callender argues that the eligibility criteria are similar to the original fee loans and a large number of needy applicants may not be entitled to them.

Moreover, for the first year of the new policy these loans won’t be available to distance leaners, ruling out Open University students, and in the medium term those on distance-learning courses will not be entitled to borrow as much.

Horrocks says this is alarming, adding: “This decision will adversely affect disabled students, for whom distance learning is the best option, and those from poorer backgrounds who need maintenance loans to support them while they study.”

Another financial obstacle many part-time learners still face is that if they have taken a degree in the past, they may not be entitled to help to change direction. The Labour government, back in 2007, enraged vice-chancellors by withdrawing funding for those studying for a second degree at the same level as their first – beginning the decline of the part-time market.

Now the government has relaxed the rules from this summer for certain subjects, including computing, engineering, physics, chemistry and maths. However, Horrocks has called for it to scrap the policy altogether.

Callender says: “What does this mean for part-time arts, humanities and social science courses, will they disappear? What does this tell us about the different types of knowledge we value? It is quite probable that a lot of such courses have disappeared already.”