We're the best universities for access - we're more accustomed to taking students from inner-city, working-class backgrounds

Steve Freeman, Natfhe official

The lecturers' union Natfhe says the new universities' policy of welcoming students from homes where there is no tradition of going to university is in line with government thinking, but is under-resourced.

By 2010, the government wants to see 50% of all 18- to 30-year-olds experiencing higher education and new universities say they are playing an important role in reaching these targets.

Natfhe is organising a lobby of Parliament on Wednesday in an attempt to raise the concerns of many institutions.

University's crisis

The issue has been prompted by the case of the South Bank University (SBU), where 128 staff could face the sack in a third wave of redundancies as a result of budget cuts.

Natfhe representatives at SBU claim the government is imposing �6.1m of cuts this year and �8.5m next year because the university has not met its recruitment targets.

But they say the funding regime does not favour its student and course profile of many mature students, a high number of access and non-traditional qualifications and more part-time degree courses and modular programmes.

SBU union officials are also concerned that funding is based on each student completing a year's study, so the university gets nothing for someone who leaves part way through the year.

"Yet SBU still has to teach these students and deploy the appropriate level of resources," Natfhe says.

'Institutionalised discrimination'

And the "postcode premium" of 5% for each student from a socially disadvantaged area is "totally inadequate" and does not reflect the true costs of supporting such students, SBU union representatives say.

"The failure to provide adequate compensation to cover the real costs of HE constitutes a form of institutionalised discrimination against working class and ethnic minority students," Natfhe says.

"SBU faces a 'double whammy' of inadequate funding producing higher staff-student rations and higher drop out rates."

Natfhe's representative for the university, economics lecturer Steve Freeman, said new universities were traditionally strong on widening access to higher education.

"We're the best universities for access - we're more accustomed to taking students from inner-city, working-class backgrounds.

"We're more of a teaching institution than research-based and I'd like to think we're better teachers because that's what we do," he said.

If new universities were allowed to "go under", the government's access agenda would be affected and students' opportunities would be reduced, he added.