Examining the potential impact of full tuition fees on mature part-time students in English higher education

Abstract

This paper examines current part-time mature learners’ views on the potential impact upon future students as full fees are introduced from 2012. It investigates the problems which part-time mature learners may face with the advent of student loans and subsequent debt, given that they are usually combining complex lives with their studies, with less time to repay any loan in their working lifetime. Despite government rhetoric about the need to increase participants from these groups, most advice and guidance has focused on the traditional full-time market, with little being done to investigate the views of part-time mature learners or to provide appropriate support for them from 2012 onwards.

The views have been gathered through focus group discussions with students in a traditional English university and four of its further education partner colleges via online forums. Resultant data have been analysed to look at emerging themes, which can be summarised as: relief that the respondents had avoided the new fee regime; lack of understanding about current funding; fear that their families would suffer and taking a loan would somehow be a ‘selfish’ strategy; fear that graduate employment would still elude them; fear that their age would mean that they would never be able to repay the debt; a perception that the new regime would generate ‘extra’ money for universities which would be reflected in increased contact hours and wariness about the generous repayment terms currently offered because a change of government could signal new policies and processes.

Keywords:

• part-time students
• fees
• lifelong learning