The current funding system leaves many part-time students worse off. Reform should address this inequality

When a school or hospital is under threat, it is common to hear about local people rallying around to support it. Universities are, similarly, public institutions usually rooted in a particular place. But I wonder how many of them will enjoy backing from their local community in the cuts they face ahead.

In a speech on Thursday David Willetts said we need "some radical thinking" in higher education and to "think before deeming any proposition 'off limits'". One idea he floated was to separate teaching and examinations, with students able to study for a degree in their local area that would be validated by another institution further away. The merits of this idea will be debated, not least on whether it may create divisions between those with and without the means to move away from home.

But Willetts was right to note that a similar principle lay behind universities founded in England and Wales between 1849 and 1949, all of which initially awarded University of London degrees. He cited the University of Bristol, where I work, as one example. Other lessons could be drawn from its history. For example, when a "University College" was founded in the city in the 1870s, its purpose was to extend university opportunities to local people, with more students attending in the evening than during the day.

Today there is little such provision.

If Willetts wishes to think radically he might begin by exploring how elite universities can reconnect with adults in their own communities. Such a move would fit in with the Conservatives' wider emphasis on local participation and with Vince Cable's speech last week, in which he spoke movingly about how adult education "saved" his mother's mind.

Funding for such programmes has been eroded by successive governments. I run a part-time degree in English Literature and Community Engagement, taught entirely in evenings, and a small programme of short courses. When we ran a short course with the Black Development Agency last year, one student said that she had not known that there was a university in Bristol other than the University of the West of England. She has subsequently come on to an "access" course and is considering options to progress to a degree. But for many others such opportunities remain literally unimaginable.

In this context, it is no surprise that universities might be seen in the public mind as, in Willetts's words, a "burden on the taxpayer". This is inevitable if they are understood only as places where (often privileged) individuals attain qualifications – a problem that higher fees will exacerbate – rather than as institutions with a local and social purpose.

There remain questions about how any new government thinking can be reconciled with the reality of cuts ahead – and with the very different policies the coalition parties retain, on tuition fees in particular. Willetts referred in his speech to the "lively discussions" that he and Cable have enjoyed. There are surely more of those to come.

But it is clear that a reform of part-time study is likely. New research, funded by the Higher Education Careers Service Unit (Hecsu), shows that the inequities in the current funding system leave many part-time students significantly worse off than their full-time peers. The Hecsu study also underlines the social diversity that such opportunities bring: 29% of part-time students come from the "routine or manual" socio-economic group; the average household income is £20,000. Yet an increase in tuition fees will deter many adult students on low incomes, even if the support for those who are part-time improves. There may be ways forward, such as replacing fees with a graduate tax or charging lower fees for those who study at home. The government should also ensure there is funding for those studying for less that 50% of a full-time course, who currently receive no support.

David Latchman, master of Birkbeck College, commented recently that part-time students should no longer be "the Cinderellas of the higher education sector". The coalition has an opportunity to transform the experience of this neglected student body and, at the same time, to reconnect all universities to one part of their mission: to serve local people.

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