Universities braced to lose million

The Government wants to scrap subsidies for adults doing second undergraduate degrees, saying it needs to invest the money in getting more people without higher qualifications through university.

Today, the University of London's Birkbeck College said it faced losing £8million from its budget and warned it might have to raise tuition fees or cut courses and jobs if ministers do change their mind. A third of Birkbeck's students are doing second undergraduate degrees to change careers or get better jobs, making the college particularly vulnerable to the impact of the proposals.

In total, eight out of the 10 universities that stand to lose the most money through the changes are in London.

Academics, with the backing of Mayor Ken Livingstone, the Confederation of British Industry and more than 200 MPs, including dozens of Labour backbenchers, predict the impact on the economy would be severe.

Universities Secretary John Denham said the changes would save the Government about £100 million and help it meet its target of ensuring that four out of 10 adults have undergraduate degrees by 2020.

But David Latchman, master of Birkbeck College, London's leading college for part-time students, said the policy was likely to reduce skills levels in the population.

He said: "It's so easily defensible in a single sentence which says, 'Shouldn't we put resources into the people that don't have degrees?' The trouble is that it's not only simple, it's simplistic because it doesn't relate to individual people and their lives."

Professor Latchman gave the example of a former Birkbeck student. Bernadette Wren, 55, did her first degree, an MA in philosophy, and worked as a teacher before deciding to change career.

She studied for a BSc in psychology at Birkbeck, while continuing with her day job. Now she is a clinical psychologist and family therapist at the Tavistock Clinic in Bloomsbury, who also conducts research and trains postgraduate psychotherapists.

Mrs Wren said: "I wouldn't have contemplated giving up work as a teacher to do a full-time second degree.

"I was in my thirties and didn't want to return to a pauper lifestyle - if the fees were much higher I would have struggled to complete the degree."

Professor Latchman said his students were highly motivated, hard-working and the kind of people needed to ensure economic growth. He urged ministers to look for a face-saving exit, by including students doing "equivalent or lower qualifications" in the 2009 university fees review. This is expected to raise or remove the £3,000-ayear cap on what universities can charge full-time undergraduates.

Part-time students at Birkbeck typically pay around £5,000 for a four-year course. If the changes go ahead, this would rise sharply.

A Birkbeck spokesman said the university would be unable to give figures until it saw how the Government intended to proceed in the new year.

Shadow universities secretary David Willetts said: "We will work with the many people hit by the policy to try to get ministers to change their minds."