Why part-time higher education matters

A special issue of Adults Learning, exploring the crisis in demand for mature and part-time higher education, has been published by NIACE. Despite the extension of eligibility to tuition fee loans to part-time students in 2012, part-time enrolments have gone into free fall, with full-time, mature student numbers also in steep decline.
This Adults Learning Extra gives some of the leading commentators and key stakeholders in the sector, an opportunity to publicly debate an issue of growing concern, to set out the major challenges the sector faces and to consider how to move forwards towards a solution.
The journal poses a critical challenge to government and institutions: to better understand the barriers to mature and part-time access to higher education and to consider how they can better persuade, encourage and incentivise adults to participate.