03 Jul 2018
The new fees and funding regime introduced in 2012 enabled sustained investment into the higher education sector for full-time undergraduates. However, the impact on part-time and mature study has been a particularly severe unintended consequence of these reform. The problem that was created has yet to be addressed by government.
It is vital that the government appreciates the scale of this problem and moves to rectify it. Former government Ministers have admitted with candour that the changes in 2012 were a major cause of the current problems in part-time and mature study, urging the current government to find solutions.
With the current review into post-18 education ongoing, there is a great deal of hope that these issues will be addressed, and progress can be made. MillionPlus, however, believes that there are concrete steps that should be taken to start to seriously address this decline and make higher education more flexible and truly accessible to all.
Download Parliamentary briefing: Part-Time and Continuing Education »