THOUSANDS of students hoping to embark on part-time study for degrees next year will find their ambitions blocked as universities fear that they will no longer be able to afford the cost of running the courses.

Vice-chancellors believe that part-time degrees could gradually disappear as more universities turn to full-time education to maximise funding.

With more than 812,000 students, the part-time sector involves 42 per cent of higher education students and is the biggest growth area for universities. However, from 2006, part-time students, unlike their full-time counterparts, will not be eligible for maintenance grants or bursaries and will have to pay increased tuition fees.

Ivor Crewe, president of Universities UK, said: “There is a real danger that universities will see full-time education as financially more advantageous than part-time education. Universities will feel they can’t charge higher fees to part-time students and, given that higher education is a loss-making enterprise, universities will be tempted to move full-time.”

Last week the Higher Education Statistics Agency disclosed a 4.2 per cent rise in the number of part-time first-year students to 406,550 in 2003-04. In ten years the number of part-timers has risen by 92 per cent, against 10 per cent for full-timers.

In spite of this growth, the needs of part-time students, many of whom are single parents and mature students, were ignored in the Higher Education act 2004. As a result, universities face putting up tuition fees to the proportionate level of full-time degrees or finding money from elsewhere to pay for them.

Les Ebdon, Vice-Chancellor of Luton University, which has 4,504 part-time students, says: “The question is, if we charge £1,500 upfront, will they be able to pay or will we just kill the market off? There is a very powerful disincentive now to recruit part-timers and a real danger that part-time degrees could wither on the vine”.

From next year, full-time undergraduates will have to repay tuition fees only when their income exceeds £15,000 a year, and the real rate of interest will be set at zero. As a result, universities feel able to charge full-time undergraduates higher fees of up to £3,000 — a rise of 30 per cent per student over the combined tuition fee plus government grant that universities receive now.

Vice-chancellors say that although part-time students must pay fees upfront without access to the same generous loans, many will feel unable to raise the money, even though the cost of provision is the same, and will instead cut courses.

Carl, a single father of twins who is self-employed, graduated in law from Luton in 2003. Having paid £90 a week in childminding charges, he said that higher tuition fees would certainly put him off doing a degree now. “It’s not worthwhile, if you balance what you lose from working with what you gain from a degree. A degree already costs £4,000 over four years, so if they’re now saying they’ll charge £3,000 upfront and no bursaries, it’s a double whammy.”

David Latchman, Master of Birkbeck College in London, which with the Open University is the only institution in Britain dedicated to part-time degrees.

Professor Latchman fears he will have to put up fees, but he is concerned that any increase without a rise on the cap on fee waivers will hit the very people Birkbeck should help. “Everything is calculated to put off precisely the ones you want to attract — we’re not going to put off the City banker, but the single mum who wants to climb another rung on the career ladder with a degree,” he said.

A survey of students at Birkbeck suggested that more than 40 per cent would be forced to give up their courses if fees were increased. That figure rose to 90 per cent at the Open University. David Vincent, Vice-Chancellor of the Open University, says that higher fees would be unsustainable and has offered instead to lay on courses in subjects that other universities have dropped. “We can support subjects which individual universities can no longer afford to teach, but I don’t think an increase in business that way is an adequate alternative.”

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