The government's higher education policies have led the Open University to announce a significant fees increase for next year. We in the Open University Student Association strenuously resist this move and an e-petition has been started to ask the government to rethink its proposals.

Thousands of students who've been failed by their previous educational experiences graduate with the OU every year. These are people who've been written off and labelled as "non-academic". These are people from disadvantaged backgrounds, who've grown up believing university is not for people like them, but who have been able to study with the OU to achieve something they thought they'd never be able to achieve – a university education. Even though student loans have been opened up to part-time students for the first time as part of the government's changes to university funding, we know many of these people are debt-averse and will see a student loan as a lifelong debt. How are these people going to be encouraged to take the plunge to discover their talent and improve their lives?

It is also true that many will not be able to get one of the government's loans. These are people that want to study standalone modules, or have already studied at university level. They could be doing this to re-skill to get back into the workplace after redundancy, or to up-skill to further their careers. These are good reasons for wanting to update old qualifications, or qualifications that no longer serve their needs, but they will not be able to get a student loan to help them.

We know that the changes to the OU's fees in England are due to changes to how universities are funded. The increase from around £700 for a 60 credit module to £2,500 is a necessary response to a significant reduction in funding. We also know that the OU has kept its new fee as low as possible so education isn't prohibitive – indeed it is one of the lowest fee levels when the new system comes in next year – but we also believe many of the people I've mentioned above (those the OU was set up to help) might feel this increase in fees is a hurdle they can't get over.

The Open University has been doing "lifelong learning" since before the term was even invented. It's done great things for the UK economy. Since it was founded, 1.7 million people have been Open University students, and have gone on to be more skilled and more productive, in virtually all walks of life. Its partnership with the BBC – the first of its kind – has brought educational programmes like Frozen Planet to our screens for millions of people to enjoy and learn. The Open University is something the UK can take pride in. Its ideas and methods are followed by educators in other countries. The government's own Lifelong Learning Taskforce said in January this year that the UK set a "world standard in distance learning" by establishing the Open University. We'd encourage anyone considering studying at university level to look to the OU because of the quality of education and opportunity it offers. But anything that diminishes our university's singular ability to take the experience of higher education to those that no one else has reached, and to provide life-changing experiences for thousands of such students year after year, undermines that towering achievement, and we will strenuously resist it. We believe that our university will survive, whatever governments throw at it, but we see the forced increase in the OU's fees as a real threat to the university's openness.

We want the government to consider the impact its changes to higher education funding will have on the very people the UK government set out to support over 40 years ago when it created the OU. There must be many, many Open University graduates and past students out there who know exactly what I'm talking about when I say an OU degree is something to be proud of and shows commitment, knowledge and achievement, often in the face of adversity. I'm asking them – and others who believe in the OU's ethos and mission to make education open to all – to please sign the e-petition, so that we can have enough signatures to get our debate in parliament and make sure that the OU can continue to open the doors of education that have been so firmly closed for many.

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