The campus of the future

UNIVERSITIES

The vice-chancellor of Staffordshire University is spearheading a revolution for an education-on-demand culture that will regenerate local communities, writes Lucy Hodges

Stephan Oates is the future of higher education. A father of six children and grandfather of two, he works as a part-time cleaner at Newcastle College in Newcastle-under-Lyme in the early hours of the morning, finishing his shift at 8am. Then he hotfoots it to the University of Staffordshire's Stoke-on-Trent campus where he has been studying fine art and where he is one of a large army of part- timers.

It is an exhausting lifestyle but it provides Oates, 41, with an education and a living - and it is increasingly the kind of life that people are choosing. That is what Professor Christine King, vice-chancellor of Staffordshire University, will be telling the government in her report on part-timers in higher education. And that is why she believes that radical change is needed in the way that universities function to ensure that they offer the flexible hours, courses and learning styles needed in the 21st century. Universities will have to say goodbye to the long summer vacation and concentrate on meeting the needs of their customers, the students, she thinks.

"If the higher education sector is going to be genuinely demand- led, if it is going to play its role in giving society the skilled people it needs, if it is going to widen participation by offering more people the skills they require to go into employment, then it can't just say: 'Fantastic, but you've got to do it Tuesday at two o'clock, and by the way you've got to have this and you've got to have that as well'," says King.

"It's got to be organised around students' needs. That's not rocket science but it's very complex and challenging for a lot of universities if most of the money comes from 19-year-olds, who want different services and times."

Oates is grateful to Staffordshire for giving him the opportunities he missed at the age of 16. "We have all the amenities here that we need," he says. "Not only is the library open until 3am but we now have all the latest software in the library, which is fantastic for students of new media."

He has certainly taking advantage of these opportunities, being named joint winner this year of the annual prize in the university's arts, media and design faculty. He plans now to apply for a master's degree at the university.

The vice-chancellor, however, believes that it's not only the mature students who require the flexible rosters, 24-hour libraries and cafeterias, and customised programmes. The 19-year-olds, she thinks, need them too. That's because they are working in supermarkets part-time to make ends meet, coming into the university at night and doing their study in the small hours of the morning.

Staffordshire's boss has been appointed part-timers' tsar by John Denham, the universities secretary, a subject she knows about because one-quarter of her students are part-time. She has been asked by the minister to write a report on what should be done for part-timers as part of a look at the future of higher education in the run-up to the top-up fees review. King will have to produce by September, so she doesn't have much time in which to gaze into her crystal ball.

She believes that higher education is changing so fast that the divide between full- and part-time students will disappear, certainly in some universities. We are moving towards a world where higher education is part-time de facto, she thinks. The full-time students are shelf-stacking in supermarkets alongside the part- timers. Why shouldn't they be treated the same?

One of the big issues dividing full-timers from part-timers is money. Like many vice-chancellors of new universities King believes that part-timers get a raw deal. Three years ago she, along with 21 other university bosses, tried to make part-time students into an election issue by writing an open letter highlighting it.

They argued that part-timers are among the most vulnerable students because they often must juggle a family with a job and study and are not given the same loans and grants as full-timers. That changed in 2005. To that extent the vice-chancellors' letter was successful. Grants were introduced for some part-timers. The issue moved up the political agenda, but part-timers remain short- changed, the government's critics maintain.

King is not able to address student funding in her report, because it is outside her remit. Nor does she have any money to commission research or to amass evidence. But she is undeterred. King is using her head of policy and strategy at Staffordshire. "We have between us been talking to a number of people and have formal submissions from them," she says. "We have an excellent submission from the NUS who took soundings at their part-time and mature students' conference in April."

She has also listened to Universities UK and Million+, and has been talking to Birkbeck College in London, the institution that specialises in part-timers, and plans to talk to the Open University among other groups and individuals.