Part-time students could suffer from the government's tuition fees reforms as universities find it more financially attractive to take full-timers instead, ministers have been warned.
From next year, the government will lend full-time undergraduates the money to cover fees of up to £3,000 a year, which students will repay after they graduate. In contrast, part-time students must continue to have to pay upfront fees and will not get interest-free loans. Universities have said they will not be able to raise part-time fees in line with the £3,000 for full-timers.
This would give institutions a financial incentive to discriminate against part-time students, warned Lord Dearing, whose inquiry in 1997 paved the way for Labour to charge undergraduate fees.
He told the House of Lords yesterday: "With an increase in fees for full-time students effectively guaranteed by the government, it could well be in the interests of universities to substitute full-time for part-time places. And that could be to the national disadvantage."
Lord Adonis, education minister in the Lords, also faced strong concerns from peers about the position of the Open University and Birkbeck College London, both of which take only part-time students and will not benefit from the proposed fee increases. He said the number of part-time students had risen by 45% since 1997.
Labour ex-cabinet minister Lord Barnett, honorary fellow of London's Birkbeck College and former trustee of the Open University (OU), said those institutions which relied on part-timers, were "desperately short of funds".
And the former Labour minister Lord Graham of Edmonton, who said he was the only OU graduate in parliament, said: "There is a growing resentment, at least in the Open University and others, that by comparison with those for full-time students the institutions for part-time students have got the dirty end of the stick."
Baroness Sharp of Guildford asked why the government continued to discriminate against part-time students. "Why do they not have access, as do their full-time counterparts, to post-graduation repayment of loans ... and why do they not have access to maintenance grants?"
Lord Adonis, a former Downing Street adviser closely linked to the variable fees policy, said universities were "acutely conscious" of the demand for both part and full-time courses. "The government would not expect that sense of mission to change simply because of changes to the fee regime, which start next year," he said.
He said the government had introduced grants of up to £885 a year for part-time students and added that many part-time students were supported by their employers. (In reply to Baroness Warmsley he conceded a figure of 30% but said 70% of OU students were in work and so could afford it.) Many of the bursaries totalling £300m to be offered by universities from next year would be available to part-time students, he claimed.
Lord Adonis said the government would do nothing to damage the future of the Open University, which was one of proudest achievements of past Labour governments and where student numbers had risen from 114,000 to 151,000 since 1997.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England was conducting a fundamental review of funding and was in dialogue with both the OU and Birkbeck, he said.
