To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the potential of part-time study to enable more people to acquire qualifications.

My Lords, I am pleased to introduce this debate today because it is both timely and urgent. It is timely in the sense that it is the end of the summer term, when thousands of bright young people are making plans to take up what is now the accepted route to university qualifications. It is therefore a good time to challenge the assumption that three years’ full-time study, usually residential, at a university is the only way to go. It is urgent because there is a serious crisis in part-time education, which needs to be addressed. I am pleased that even ahead of the Universities UK review that will be published in the autumn, engagement with the matter should be kept in the public awareness and that the campaign, Part-time Matters, is supported by this debate.

I declare my interest: I am president of Birkbeck and have an honorary degree from the Open University—both institutions with a fine and long-standing record of providing part-time study leading to full degrees for their students and world-class champions of the case for lifelong learning.

First, the facts: enrolment figures for part-time study at both graduate and postgraduate level are falling year on year. The number of part-time undergraduate entrants has fallen by 40% since 2010. Following the annual report of the Office for Fair Access—OFFA—for the 2012-13 academic year, its director, Professor Les Ebdon expressed concern about the fall in part-time study and applications from mature students. The university think tank, million+, called on Ministers to launch a high-profile campaign to promote part-time study. The chair of million+, Professor Michael Gunn, declared that,

“there is a real risk of a downward spiral that will depress social mobility and lead to skills shortages in the long term”.

Who are part-time students? In the main, they are older and more likely to be female and less diverse than full-time students. They are also likely to have other commitments, either in public careers out there in the workforce—some 80% of part-time learners are in employment—or with domestic careers as homemakers: women struggling with the work/life balance and hoping to keep their qualifications up to date. There is also a considerable number of retired people who find delight and fulfilment in late-life learning. There is real potential in growing the numbers in this group. Indeed, it has the blessing of David Willetts, the Minister for Universities and Science, who sees scope for older citizens retraining and adding to their skills or simply engaging in retirement in lifelong learning for its own sake. This is far from the standard profile of the student cohort.

Central to the issue is money. Following fee changes in 2012, part-time undergraduate students have had access to fee loans. However, some part-time fees increased in 2012. The Higher Education Funding Council for England, HEFCE, reported that between November 2012 and January 2013—scarcely three months —21 colleges reported a drop in demand for part-time courses because of reluctance to take on student loans. These moves in student numbers are steep and sudden.

So how is money impacting on part-time study applications? First, students seem to be unclear about what scope there is for loans or employer-funding and over what time repayments are to be made. Students, even if they know about it, struggle to navigate the Student Loans Company. Each and every hiccough in the system acts as a deterrent to student applications.

Secondly, the withdrawal of funding for ELQs—equivalent or lower qualifications—came into effect in 2008-09, and in January 2009 David Lammy, then Minister of State for Education, asked HEFCE to draw up an early review of the impact of that policy. The first evidence indicates that overall fundable numbers had already reduced. The most commonly cited area affected by the EFQ ruling is lifelong learning. That can hardly be surprising—you cut the funding and numbers fall away.

Thirdly, the economy of the country has a direct impact on part-time studies. At a time of redundancies and a relatively stagnant economy, individuals are anxious about their jobs and future prospects. They are often asked to work longer hours, which makes part-time study difficult. There is also evidence that employer-funding is on the decline, suggesting that this is something that employers—wrongly, in my view—see as an extra to their core budgets rather than a fundamental part of their employee welfare and development.

How much does any of this matter? It is crucial for several reasons. The known and existing benefits of part-time study are already understood: it increases social mobility by allowing people from poorer backgrounds to access study that they would not be able to afford full-time, and it allows adults who have missed out earlier by taking employment straight from school to rethink and reshape their prospects, consider a change of direction and gain a more fulfilling and self-directed future for themselves. According to the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, there is evidence that it boosts skill levels and improves employability. The NIACE also tells us that adult learning contributes to better health: evidence exists that taking up courses as an adult increases the chances of giving up smoking and reduces the risk of depression, especially in women. I can thoroughly understand the latter; the risk of social isolation and stress often experienced by young mothers is all too familiar.

If all this sounds a little like mother love and apple pie, a utopian vision in which we all go on learning and feeling and doing better in our lives, I think it brings us to a more wide-reaching discussion about how education as it currently serves this society is formulated and structured, and why it is not answering all our needs. I was brought up short by a grandson who declared to me, “Your generation”—in which I think he also included his parents—“never asked us if we wanted to go to university. It is always assumed that if we pass exams well, we will go on to three years’ residential at a university. No other options are given any serious consideration”. Indeed, they are not. What is more, there is increasing evidence that this current accepted pattern does not always benefit students or learning. Young people can arrive at university already exhausted by the educational template that they have been following. They give evidence of this by a failure to focus, varying attendance and drop-out rates.

There is strong evidence that part-time students are strongly motivated, have a strong sense of intention in their study and a commitment to its helping improve their outlook, their careers and their sense of fulfilment. That is why, in launching this debate today, I hope to start and continue a debate about how to shift the focus of education better to match the needs of those who would be students.

We need government help to do this, and I believe that, with the argument strongly made, we will get a good hearing. At a recent reception for the Part-time Matters campaign, David Willetts spoke encouragingly of his wish to stop the decline of part-time study. But the message has to go further than a reception in the Cholmondeley Room. Schools, heads, teachers, careers advisers and parents should all be aware of part-time study as an option. Trade unions and professional groups, as well as informal organisations like the WI, should be familiar with the existence of part-time study and be aware of what it can offer and how it can be afforded. In this way, we can check the decline and move to boost educational opportunities for those who might otherwise lose out.

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and to thank her for raising this extremely important issue. I agree with her thoroughly that it is one that we need to give as much publicity to as we can.

I, too, should declare an interest in that I am an honorary fellow of Birkbeck. I was awarded that honorary fellowship for my work during the early part of this century on raising the profile of part-time learning and arguing for parity between part-time and full-time study. The grants and loans were all being accorded to full-time students because, as the noble Baroness said, the assumption was that the only time that matters is that between the ages of 18 and 21. I felt it was extremely important that part-time students, not only at the university level but also those in further education, should be given some consideration.

While in many senses I was unhappy about the introduction of full-cost fees when the regulations went through in 2010, one of the good things I kept pointing to was the fact that at long last we had parity. In terms of loans, part-time students now have access to the same loan schemes as full-time students. That was an important victory. It was therefore a matter of considerable shock and disappointment on my part that the major effect of introducing full-cost fees is that it has hit the part-timers of this world rather than the full-timers. We have seen a remarkably small decrease in full-time applications, but a considerable one in part-time applications.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, indicated, part-time education is in many ways a hidden sector in this country. If you tell people that there are actually 824,000 part-time students compared with 1,167,000 full-timers—half as many, and one-third in numerical terms—most of them just do not believe it. In full-time equivalence terms, they account for 250,000 students. The drop of 40% in applications is equivalent to Basingstoke dropping off the map, so it really is significant and important.

The sector is an interesting one. It is disproportionately female, at 63% as against 37% male. It is less diverse, with 18% from the black and ethnic minorities compared with 22% in the university sector as a whole. The subjects studied are also disproportionately focused in certain areas: the professions allied to medicine and education. Of course, the Open University dominates the sector. I believe that the total number of full-time equivalents at the OU is 90,000 to 100,000, and again the total number is around 250,000. The university’s mixed introductory courses are extremely popular. Large numbers of the people involved in part-time education are taking undergraduate course modules but not necessarily following through with entire courses. That is important and something that we need to pick up.

Part-time education is liked by employers, who recognise that it improves skills and knowledge and raises productivity and efficiency. However, despite acknowledging this, employers will not, on the whole, pay fees for part-time education. Where they do, it is on the whole for customised courses that specifically fit their own needs or on behalf of the higher-level employees in their unit who they send off on expensive MBA courses and that sort of thing.

Why is part-time education so important for this country? The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned a number of the socialising effects—such as the sense of fulfilment and the benefits for older people—all of which are very important and must not be neglected. However, we also need to be aware of two things. First, as a country, we have a very poor skill profile. We have quite a number at the graduate level but are disproportionately poor at the intermediate level—what is known as level 3 and level 4—and at technician levels. As a country, our skill profile remains rather poor compared to other countries. Secondly, in my generation, you went into a job when you were 21, post-university, and to some extent you trained in that job, carried through with it and ended up with a nice inflation-linked pension and so forth. That is no longer true, and most people will have to change jobs throughout their lives.

If we are going to upskill and reskill this current generation, it is vital that we have the means of doing so. Part-time education—being able to earn and learn at the same time, and upskill and reskill—is vital to upgrading the skill profile of this country. What can we do about it? One thing, certainly, is more publicity. We need to make people aware that part-time education is there and can be pursued. Secondly, picking up on what I was saying earlier about most people doing small chunks of things, we need more flexible courses that students can opt in and out of—more modular courses and mixing and matching distance learning, albeit backed up by the strong mentoring that the Open University has stressed. If we are going to do that, we need a proper credit transfer system. We really need to work on that and get something much more efficient.

I make a plea for more co-operation between higher education and further education. I am appalled at the current situation where these two sectors, which used to co-operate with each other, have been split apart. Many of the universities that used to accredit graduate courses in further education colleges have pulled out from accrediting them, which makes for a very difficult situation. We certainly need to look at these ELQ rules and ease up on them.

I put in a plea for two incentives of some sort. One is for employers. There is a tax credit for R&D, where small companies that spend on R&D can claim an extra tax credit, which means that they can not only claim it as an expense against tax but claim it twice over. We should look at a similar scheme for education and training. If you spend money in America on fees for part-time education, you can claim it against tax. Why should we not be able to claim the money that we spend on training ourselves against tax? I would like to see that happen.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on initiating this debate. My comments will focus on universities as that is the sector I am familiar with. Universities could surely develop more flexibility in two respects. First, there should be a “credit” system that allows students to gain intermediate qualifications as well as to intermit and to transfer more readily between institutions. Secondly, universities should seize the opportunities offered by the internet to extend their reach.

As we know, university enrolment has hugely expanded since the student days of most of us. However, this entirely welcome expansion has not been accompanied by sufficient growth in the variety of the offerings of universities. Nearly all of them still focus on degrees that take three or four years. They are incentivised to aspire to rise in a single league table—which, incidentally, under-weights things that really matter but are hard to measure, such as how rigorous the courses are and how hard the students work. The norm is, of course, for young people to enter university more or less straight from school for full-time study. A downside of higher enrolment levels is that career opportunities for non-graduates are worse than they were in the past.

We should recognise that degree-level competence need not be achieved by continuous study in a traditional residential university. Moreover, there is nothing magic about the specific level of achievement of a degree. Credits, even if not sufficient for graduation, should be formalised. It is surely better that universities should take risks on admission, give students a chance, and let some leave after two years with a credit. Some will continue after a gap, perhaps at another institution. Others may pursue part-time distance learning. Even those who go no further should not be typecast as wastage. An American will say, “I had two years of college”, and will regard the experience as positive.

Higher education is a driver of social mobility. However, as Alan Milburn and others have shown, mobility is stagnating. Young people who have been unlucky in their schooling will not have at the age of 18 a fair chance of access to a selective university even if they have great potential. Worse still, generally they have no second chance. The optimum solution to the problem is to enhance teaching at all schools across the full geographical and social spectrum, but that will take a long time. In the shorter term, we can widen opportunities by learning something from the United States.

In California, for instance, a substantial fraction of those who attend the elite state university of Berkeley come not directly from high school but as transfer students from a lower-tier college. Our most selective universities should likewise earmark a proportion of their places for students who do not come directly from school, but have gained credits by studying at another institution, part time or online. The Open University’s OpenPlus programme, which offers two years of part-time study, is very valuable. It allows students to get up to speed so that they can be admitted into the second year of several other universities.

The importance of mature students, part-time courses and distance learning in the UK’s overall system is surely going to grow. That makes last year’s drastic decline in enrolments, revealed by HEFCE, especially worrying. It is perhaps an unintended consequence of the fee structure, of perceptions of that system among potential students, and of their lack of confidence in taking on debt even if loans are available.

Despite the overall fall, the OU has to some extent bucked the trend with a major campaign to explain the new loan scheme to potential students. We should highlight and acclaim the special role of that great institution. The OU model of distance learning supplemented by a network of local tutors and mentors has vastly more potential in the era of the internet and smartphones than when it was founded. We all have free access to the wonderful material on the OpenLearn website, much of it prepared jointly with the BBC. The OU can surely take a lead in the development of so-called MOOCs: massive open online courses. The razzmatazz around these courses comes from some very successful initiatives by Stanford and other US universities. There are now two major organisations in the US, edX and Coursera, which disseminate courses developed by leading universities.

It is excellent news that the Open University has set up a similar system called FutureLearn. UK universities should eagerly seize the opportunity to widen their impact and support the OU by contributing material to FutureLearn rather than getting locked into one of the US platforms. This is an arena where the UK has huge worldwide potential. The Open University should have a competitive edge globally, especially as some of its private-sector US counterparts have recently suffered reputational damage. Distance learning will have a transformative effect to the extent that it will threaten the future of many traditional mass universities of the kind that exist in Italy and India, which offer little more than lectures to large classes with minimal feedback.

Finally, I will mention another benign spin-off from the internet: the democratisation of research as well as of learning. We are immersed in a cyberspace that is ever more information-rich and sophisticated. Many archives are now available on the web, which is a huge boon to scholars around the world who are not close to a major library. To take a specific example, amateur scholars are reading and transcribing ships’ logbooks from the 18th and 19th centuries, which contain fascinating social history as well as important data on the history of climate change. The involvement of amateurs has been traditional in sciences such as botany, but the scope for citizen-scientists is now far wider. In my subject of astronomy, there are sometimes so much data that the professionals cannot scrutinise them all fully. It is now possible for eagle-eyed amateurs to access these datasets and themselves discover new planets. Thanks to the internet, advances can be disseminated rapidly, even throughout the developing world. Indeed, more projects can now be done co-operatively and globally, rather like improving open-source software.

There are huge opportunities, but to exploit them for maximum benefit our system needs a more diverse ecology and a blurring of the lines between higher and further education, between full time and part time—which is most relevant to this debate—and between residential and online. We need a more effective transferable credit system to facilitate transfers between institutions and to allow continuing professional development. By so doing, we can exploit the benefits of the internet, offer a more realistic second chance to young people who have been unlucky in their early education, and promote lifelong learning for us all.

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Bakewell on securing this debate and agree wholeheartedly with her that it is indeed timely.

Those who recall or took part in the debates following the passage of the Higher Education Act 2004 will know that this House has played a major role in drawing public attention to the importance of part-time higher education. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, stands out in particular for her contribution to securing some recognition that higher education policy has long been formulated with full-time, 18 year-old entrants in mind.

During those many debates, as in this one, noble Lords agreed that the economic evidence was unequivocal. The economy and the labour market are changing with increasing rapidity. To keep up, most people will have to adapt to many jobs, and several careers, during their working lives. This can only be more marked as the age of retirement goes up.

My noble friend Lord Leitch, in his 2006 Review of Skills, pointed out that 70% of the 2020 workforce had already completed compulsory education. He argued that to meet the changing needs of employers more than 40% of adults should be qualified to level 4 and above—in other words, equivalent to a degree-level qualification. The figure is up from 29% in 2005. By common agreement, that can be achieved only by increasing the level of skills of those already in work as well as of young learners.

The facts have not changed. What has changed is that, instead of a steady increase in part-time study, we have seen a marked decline. It is not a new phenomenon; it has been happening for a decade. However, as other noble Lords have said, we appear to have reached something of a crisis point. Between 2010-11 and 2012-13, the number of new entrants to part-time undergraduate study in England declined by 40%. At a recent breakfast discussion hosted by the All-Party Parliamentary University Group, we agreed that if this had happened to full-time participation, we would have seen a national outcry. Instead, there has been relatively muted comment in the media and even in Parliament. Why is this?

One answer is that it is far harder to talk about part-time students as a group. Their backgrounds and motivations are varied. They include large numbers of people from low-participation backgrounds, and with low skill levels, but a large proportion are already educated to degree level. The most substantial proportion of part-time study is directly linked to current employment, particularly in the public sector. On the other hand, some are studying for reasons of personal development and a love of learning.

There are a few really striking facts, which Claire Callender and others have done much to explain. Part-time students are more likely to be older and more likely to be female compared to their full-time counterparts. Some 63% of part-time students are female, compared with 56% of full-timers; and 80% are over 25. Two-thirds have family responsibilities and two in five have children, while 92% of full-time students do not. With the exception of Birkbeck, they are concentrated in the less research-intensive universities.

I wonder whether the lack of interest in part-time trends is associated with assumptions and prejudices which are familiar in so many other areas of policy. Are older female students invisible in higher education policy in the same way as older women appear to be invisible in so many other parts of public life? That would certainly be an illuminating area for study.

The varied characteristics of part-time students make it difficult to identify universal explanations for the decline in enrolment, but two factors appear to be particularly important. The first is that for many people considering starting—or returning to—higher education in middle life, their response to the shift in government funding to higher fees is very different from that of young learners. If you have children or dependent parents—or both—a mortgage or rising rent costs and are facing rising living costs, it may be particularly hard to face any additional expenditure. This may be especially true if you have to pay more for childcare and travel to make study possible. You may be weighing this up against the need to make a contribution to a pension for long-term security. It is clear that the introduction of fee loans, though welcome, has not helped as much as we might have expected.

The second factor is the connection between part-time study and public sector jobs. As the public sector shrinks, the proportion of people who are supported by their employers may also be falling. There are questions about whether private companies are willing to invest as much in training or whether they are maintaining their investment but focusing it on a smaller number of people. Certainly, anecdotal evidence suggests that employers may be less willing to subsidise career-enhancing study. The shift from public to private sector employment may be narrowing opportunities.

We need to know much more about what is happening in particular sectors of the economy, such as healthcare and education, where there is a particularly high concentration of part-time students, and where—if anywhere—employees are going for training if not to universities. I commend the Government for commissioning the Universities UK study, but I echo my noble friend in suggesting that it is likely to be the beginning and not the end of the conversation about how best to support and incentivise part-time higher education.

The Government face a choice. Public funding is scarce. Policy options are consequently limited. But I return to my original point. The evidence of economic need has not changed. I would argue that the Government can either pay now to encourage and support more people to study part time or they can pay later in the higher social and economic costs of supporting people who cannot get jobs in a labour market that has changed. There are short-term considerations but there are also long-term imperatives. It cannot be right to see part-time undergraduate—and, for that matter, post-graduate—higher education shrink and do nothing about it.

I have two immediate questions for the Minister. Will the Government consider incentives for employers to make contributions towards part-time higher education for their employees? Will they encourage HEFCE to provide incentives to institutions to maintain or develop part-time provision? Of course universities have to adapt, and I hope that the UUK report will help them think about how to do that, but policy will need to adapt as well.

My Lords, with the permission of the Grand Committee, I will speak sitting down. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for instigating this important debate.

As others have said, one myth that I often find still needs to be exploded is the public view of a typical university student as being 18 and leaving home to go away and study for three years on a full-time course. As an aide-memoire for the Committee, the seven speakers in this debate all attended Russell Group universities and six went to Oxbridge—very much the tradition for our era. I suspect that none of us studied part time. I was a mature student at Cambridge. The offer for part-time students was very limited and did not fit in with my job at the BBC so I had no choice. I would have loved to study part time.

We need to celebrate a higher education system that has grown and developed over recent years, recognising the needs of prospective students and creating flexible courses that fit in with work and caring duties, whether for children or other family members. Birkbeck College and the Open University in particular have outstanding records in their provision for part-time students in very different ways—something to which other speakers have already alluded.

First, despite some of the comments from other speakers, I want to congratulate the Government on making part-time students eligible for tuition fee loans. That is something that we have advocated from these Benches for a very long time, and I am sure that in the longer term there will be a real benefit to the part-time students who choose to take out the loans rather than having to find commercial loans instead, which I suspect put many off studying in the past. However, the 40% drop that others have talked about is serious. For whatever reason, individuals have not applied, and we need to advertise that that support is available. Will the Government confirm that they will be co-ordinating such a campaign, rather than leaving it to the few institutions that rely heavily on part-time students?

Having said that, I specifically commend the campaigns run by Birkbeck College and the Open University, which are eye-catching and encouraging. One such was the OU advertorial in Metro newspaper about 10 days ago, with a quiz, a number of encouraging personal stories from past and present students and information on how to apply. I saw two people sitting next to me on my commuter train doing the quiz. It really engaged them.

The Open University has also led the way with FutureLearn. The noble Lord, Lord Rees, went into that in some detail so I will not repeat it, but it is a groundbreaking proposal that is now supported by 21 HEIs in this country. It will provide free access for short courses via MOOCs—obviously the phrase of the afternoon—a web-based multi-university experience designed for a global audience. Non-university partners in FutureLearn are also important, including the British Council, the British Library and the British Museum, but the key is the OU’s expertise in distance learning, which has been critical to getting this off the ground. These courses, and the way in which students interact with each other as well as with staff across the various institutions, is the learning environment of the 21st century.

I would like to see an HE and FE sector that works to bring flexibility—real flexibility—to study for qualifications. Someone who works full-time, has had experience of a couple of short courses on the MOOC scheme and has acquired a taste for learning may want to retain that flexibility when they study for a more formal qualification such as a degree or even a shorter course with a number of modules. That is why I am glad that we are at last beginning to see credit accumulation and transfer taking off. Students can study a number of modules, bank them and, at a later date, transfer to another university to complete the next group of modules, and so on. The key to CATs is universities recognising each other’s quality assurance, and I am sorry to say that while a few HEIs are very good at this, the number is too low, and this is certainly not discussed enough.

In the late 1990s I helped to fund a project through my development agency to look at CATs in the east of England. We had a fascinating research proposal with some wonderful recommendations, which then just gathered dust because none of the institutions was prepared to take another on trust. What are the Government doing to encourage more HEIs to work together to develop CATs, so that part-time students really can study at the best time and place for them over a longer period than the usual three to five years for an undergraduate course? There are already mechanisms in place for storing a student’s record in a “personal learning cloud”, so that if they either transfer to a different university or take a break, all the information is kept in one place. The Scottish qualification system does this well, and England and Wales should take a leaf out of its book.

I welcome the Government’s increase in the Access to Learning Fund to £50 million, and I hope that universities will further top it up to give part-time students bursaries or some other chance of finding support that was denied them in the past. Not all part-time students work, and many are making large personal sacrifices to study. More worryingly, the part-time premium grant to HEIs has been halved. This is a key factor in the downward spiral of the number of part-time students, even though the grant is a very internal university-oriented one. It should be remedied as soon as funds allow.

Finally, employers ought to have a key role working with universities to devise the courses, especially as they are equal beneficiaries with the learners. Local enterprise partnerships are important stakeholders in securing more flexible skills provision and in promoting workforce development. I hope that HEFCE is preparing to strengthen the guidelines for widening participation budgets, and making HEIs demonstrate how they are working with their LEPs to promote lifelong learning and flexible higher education that is relevant to their area.

The UK needs more graduates if it is to compete economically. Over 80% of the new jobs created by 2020 will be in occupations with high concentrations of graduates. We have heard already from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills about the need for high-level qualifications. Perhaps another perspective might be that other nations are increasing their skill levels more rapidly than we are. We have sort of been coasting just above the relegation zone of the Premier League, forgetting that other people will come up and overtake us. That, of course, is important to the economy; we need to be able to challenge globally.

Part-time higher education provides an essential opportunity for students to fit study around work and family commitments. This is particularly vital for mature learners and others who need to retain an income from work while studying. Part-time higher education therefore has a special role to play in ensuring that the UK’s future workforce is equipped with the skills required for our economy to remain competitive.

Charles Darwin said:

“To change is difficult. Not to change is fatal”.

The life experiences of those who have studied part-time, often against considerable odds, are a testament to their journey of change, and to the fulfilment of their lives through their new qualifications.

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Bakewell on securing this timely debate, and on her eloquent and important speech, delivered, as you would expect from a broadcasting professional, in a very clear way and exactly to 10 minutes; I know that she was worrying about it, but she did very well. I also thank all noble Lords for their contributions, which, again, were of a very high standard. We have too few chances to debate higher education policy, and have to take every opportunity. This, again, has shown how important we think this topic is.

I declare an interest. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, was right to research our backgrounds; that shows something. However, I also claim in mitigation that I did a part-time course for six years. I struggled; it was very difficult. I finally succeeded, but I know something of which I am about to speak.

We do not get much in the way of public statements or chances to debate higher education policy. The last time we had anything major was the White Paper, Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System, in June 2011. It says about part-time students:

“For the first time, students starting part-time undergraduate courses in 2012/13, many of whom are from non-traditional backgrounds, will be entitled to an up-front loan to meet their tuition costs … This is a major step in terms of opening up access to higher education, and remedies a long-standing injustice in support for adult learners. Up to around 175,000 part-time students will benefit”.

As we have heard, that has not happened. It is clear that the Government hoped that the changes would open up access and stem the decline in part-time higher education study, but it appears to have had the opposite effect. It is clear from what we have heard today and the evidence that has been presented that the Government are failing to deal with the serious decline in part-time study The trends are worrying. Were they to continue, they could have a genuinely damaging impact on our overall skills base, which has been referred to. Towns and regions across the UK that depend on people with higher-level qualifications will not have them to fill available jobs.

We have heard in the debate about the benefits of part-time study, and the way in which it transforms and provides significant benefits for those studying part-time rather than full-time. It helps employers, society and of course the individual. It is interesting that levels of employment stability are high for part-time students, with 81% working throughout their study. Employers value part-time study as a good model to develop work-readiness in graduates and to provide existing employees with skills and knowledge. Graduates have said in surveys that part-time study has helped them develop as a person and improve their self-confidence, so there are personal benefits as well. There is no question that, if we are to provide the skills that we have heard we need in this country, part-time has a role to play and is important in itself.

We have also heard about the characteristics unique to part-time undergraduate students, but more generally in the part-time population. Many, some 80%, are over the age of 25 compared with full-time students. Nearly two-thirds are female, as we have heard, compared with 56% of full-timers. However, most have to struggle to fit family and work commitments around their studies. Entry requirements and the qualifications the students pursue are also different. Some 81% of part-time students, being employed, have to juggle many responsibilities and obviously encounter problems.

We often hear about the difficulties at Birkbeck and the Open University. The assumption made is that the bulk of the part-time student population studies there, but the facts show that 51% of all part-time undergraduates study at 10 universities, and 77% study at 40 of the UK’s 165 universities, so it is a widely spread mode of study.

The impact of the 2012-13 funding reforms has been explained. There was a 40% fall in the number of part-time students; Basingstoke fell off the map. That is a striking metaphor. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, for drawing it to our attention. I must try to remember it when we come to discuss these issues. The fall was largely because of changes in the fee structure and in the relative unwillingness of part-time students to take out loans.

We should look at this in more detail. Two-thirds of part-timers do not qualify for loans, so the higher fees have to be paid from their own pockets. High fees generally make part-time study a risky investment. University tuition fees have a negative impact on participation, and we know from general research that fee increases tend to cause a general decline in participation, particularly among students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Because many of the students are already in work, financial returns for part-time study tend to be lower than for younger, full-time students, and that has to be taken into account. Given that many people in part-time study have other responsibilities and costs, including mortgages, it is inevitable that an income-contingent fee loan will be a problem.

What should we do about this? It is clear from the debate that if we do nothing, it is very likely that both the demand for and the supply of part-time study will continue to decline. Part-time provision could possibly disappear in some higher education institutions, which will threaten the genuinely held belief in the value of lifelong learning. That is to be regretted. My noble friend Lady Warwick made the very important point that the need to acquire skills, and the benefit from doing so, have not changed, yet the numbers are plunging. Basingstoke is rapidly disappearing. We must do something.

Some of the solutions that have come up today would be helpful. As the noble Lord, Lord Rees, said, there is a need for a rethink on credit accumulation, and a need to build on that as a way of getting FE colleges and universities to collaborate. That must be a way forward in future. It is clear from the evidence generated by the Open University that providing a lot more information and advice at every level, with greater collaboration across education and skills sectors, will have an impact on those who might be considering part-time education. We should learn from that. The Government should take on these responsibilities.

We need more understanding of why the 40% drop has happened. It is fairly clear that it is to do with the financial system and the costs that would be borne by individuals, but we must understand better the change in the employment situation; whether people are coming from employment in the public sector or private sector; whether that would have an impact on whether they were released to do so; and whether their fees are paid. As a number of noble Lords said, we need a wider debate about higher education more generally—whether it should be full-time or part-time, residential or online, concentrated or lifelong. These are all important issues. They have not been discussed enough and they should be brought forward.

The wider issue that we started with, which was raised by my noble friend Lady Bakewell, is how we convince people across the country that part-time education is something of value, and that if we do not act soon, it will be lost.

My Lords, I, too, am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for the opportunity to consider this important subject. The UK has a strong tradition of part-time education, encompassing both degree-level study and vocational qualifications. Institutions such as the Open University and Birkbeck, of which the noble Baroness is president and about which she spoke so eloquently, are an integral part of our education landscape. They continue to lead the field in the provision of part-time study. Of course, qualifications provide a public recognition of achievement at the end of that study.

In higher education the Government have made significant progress in creating a flexible, dynamic system that offers students maximum choice in where, when and how they study. Our reforms have delivered a sustainable funding model as well as a renewed focus on teaching excellence and student choice. We have introduced more financial support for students and graduates and we have made a strong commitment to social mobility. UCAS data show that entry rates for disadvantaged 18 year-olds reached a new high for England in 2012.

However, we recognise that the fall in part-time entrants is a cause for concern and I share with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, my noble friend’s dramatic analogy that we are losing a Basingstoke in this—and I am sure that none of us would wish to lose Basingstoke. We are working with the sector to explore the reasons for the decline but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, pointed out, it is very difficult to talk of a “group” of part-time students because of their very wide diversity.

Higher education is an excellent long-term investment and one of the best routes to a rewarding career. The desire to study at university remains strong. For 2013 the application rate for 18 year-olds from England is at 35.5%, the second highest on record. I have also heard the comments, from around this Room and elsewhere, that young people are often not offered valid alternatives to full-time higher education, and more needs to be done in careers information advice and guidance to point out that there are alternatives to three years of full-time university. We recently had a week concentrating on apprentices. I have been out to visit some, and it was quite interesting to hear how many of them were saying that their parents and schools objected when they said, “What we want to do is an apprenticeship”. We need alternatives to those three years at university. It seems essential to me that we beef up all those opportunities when young people are leaving school particularly.

Research clearly illustrates that, even in these difficult economic conditions, the average net lifetime earnings benefit for those with a degree compared to those with just A-levels is comfortably over £100,000. We recognise that part-time adult education is an important route to higher-level learning and skills. It enables flexible study and plays a significant role in raising and updating the skills and qualifications of people already in employment. My noble friend Lady Sharp mentioned the need for upskilling and reskilling. That is one of the real aspects of the needs of our workforce in these days, and of course part-time study can play a very significant part in that. Research carried out in 2012 demonstrated the positive effects of part-time higher education for individuals, employers and the wider economy. It found that part-time study boosts economic, cultural and social development, and indeed can transform people’s lives.

The Government are working hard to create a more level playing field for part-time students. I was grateful for the acknowledgement by my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Sharp of the attempts to level the playing field by way of funding. As a key plank of our higher education reforms, new part-time students became eligible for non-means-tested tuition fee loans for the first time in 2012, responding to long-standing sector demand. This has significantly increased the number of students eligible for government support, but what we have to ask is why that is not reflected in the number of students actually taking it up. The provisions on the repayments start date for part-time students were made more generous, following representations from this House, but I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, that more clarity over the funding available is imperative.

Unlike for full-time students, the Government have placed no limit on the number of part-time students whom institutions may recruit, so institutions can expand their provision if there is demand from prospective students. Undergraduate part-time entrant numbers have been declining since their peak in 2008-09, the year when the previous Government introduced the equivalent and lower qualifications policy. As the Committee knows, that means that students qualifying for a qualification equivalent to or lower than the one that they already hold are not eligible for student support, and their institution does not receive HEFCE funding in respect of them. Both my noble friend Lady Sharp and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, flagged up the problems of the ELQ in relation to enabling funding for students who would wish to take part-time funding. We hope that this will be part of the Universities UK review, which we await in October, because it has become a real issue. However, with all these options, we have to consider the priorities and what is affordable within spending limits.

The Government and the sector are working together to explore what more we can do to support part-time study. We need to understand the evidence on the part-time market. HEFCE is monitoring changes in demand and supply. As I have mentioned, Universities UK is undertaking a review which it will publish in October. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, commented that we do not debate higher education often enough in the Chamber; I am quite sure that that review will give us an opportunity once again to raise this very important subject. We hope that it will encourage the adoption of best practice and offer recommendations to support part-time study.

We are also increasing our efforts to communicate the benefits of higher education and the financial support available to part-time students. Both my noble friend Lady Brinton and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned the importance of communication. Our communications activity for 2013 has elements focused specifically on part-time applicants. This includes our student finance tour, which will be visiting further education colleges up and down the country, and digital advertising on key websites visited by prospective applicants, which have already been mentioned.

The Student Loans Company is open for applications for part-time student finance nearly four months earlier than last year. Its partnership with The Student Room provides dedicated information on finance for part-time students. For the first time, the UCAS website carries messages highlighting financial support for part-time study and features a new search tool which lists the Open University’s part-time courses. The next phase of this tool will allow all other members to display their part-time courses on UCAS.com, because, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, pointed out, many universities offer part-time provision.

The noble Lord, Lord Rees, and my noble friend Lady Brinton focused on the exciting development of the MOOCs, the massive open online courses. Many UK universities are now developing free online courses that are attracting thousands of new learners. In collaboration with a number of partner universities, the Open University is developing the UK’s first online MOOC platform, FutureLearn, to be launched later this year. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rees, that a UK version of this would be an exciting development and mean that we would not always be dependent on what the US is providing—although it is very often a leader in such fields. Opportunities such as these help to facilitate mobility, increase our knowledge economy and support lifelong learning, which, as we know, brings benefit to the country and enriches lives.

My noble friend Lady Sharp mentioned the changes in employment over the years and the fact that people do not now go into one secure job. The chances are that they will change job any number of times and therefore need to upskill and reskill to keep abreast. We were hearing today from employers who find it almost impossible to recruit the number of skilled local employees that they need in spite of the job opportunities being there. Something is definitely not going right in the transition between schools and work.

My noble friend mentioned credit transfers, as did the noble Lord, Lord Rees, and my noble friend Lady Brinton, and transfer between universities, as happens from time to time with some universities in the US and other parts of the world. I remember years ago working on national vocational qualifications for transfer of units there between awarding bodies. It seemed to be relatively straightforward, but I have to say that it was anything but. I also remember, 20-odd years ago, working with universities on possibility for credit transfers. Universities cherish their autonomy. It became increasingly obvious that this would be a very bitty operation and that it was unlikely that we would secure the motivation among all universities to co-operate in that way.

My noble friend Lady Sharp mentioned a possible tax system for employers. We understand that the UUK review will explore ways to incentivise employers to support part-time study—the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, mentioned this, too—and the Government will carefully consider those recommendations.

The noble Lord, Lord Rees, also mentioned universities setting aside places for second-chance students. We come back to the same problem—universities are in control of their own admissions policies and it is for them to consider applications from all non-traditional applicants. Of course, many universities already consider those with non-traditional qualifications, but that is very far from universal.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Warwick and Lady Bakewell, mentioned the fact that very often part-time study is an attractive option for women. The Government are committed to making higher education accessible for all. There has been tremendous, rapid achievement for women but I note the rather negative connotation that the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, put upon it. As for higher education supporting access, by 2014 universities are expecting to spend £684.5 million on access, including financial support, outreach and student success. Obviously, the contribution of employers and partnerships between HEIs and local enterprise partnerships will be critical if we are to get the results that we wish.

Our world-class colleges and universities have responded well to the Government’s reforms. There is a new focus on the student experience, greater social mobility and greater flexibility in ways of studying and in funding. According to the World Bank, the funding system is exemplary, and the OECD says that ours is the only sustainable system in Europe. But we have much more to do. We will be working with the sector to monitor the changing demand for part-time study and to promote the opportunities available.

I sincerely thank the noble Baroness for introducing this productive debate. We have much more to discuss but this has certainly started us on the path to ensuring that this remains a high-profile topic. I thank all noble Lords who have made such valuable and incisive contributions.