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Approximately 85,000 part-time teaching staff working in further education (FE) and adult and community learning (ACL) are often seen as 'a problem'. The intrinsic 'part-timeness' of these staff tends to marginalise them, and often they remain under-recognised and largely unsupported. Yet this picture is over-simplified. This article examines how part-time staff make creative use of professional autonomy and agency to mitigate problematic 'casual employment' conditions, reporting on results from Learning and Skills Development Agency-sponsored research (2002-2006) with 700 part-time staff in the learning and skills sector. The question of agency was reported as a key factor in part-time employment. Change is necessary for the professional agency of part-timers to be harnessed as the sector responds to ambitious sectoral 'improvement' agendas following the Foster Report and FE White Paper. Enhanced professionalisation for part-time staff needs greater recognition and inclusion in change agendas. \u

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Recent policy in higher education in many countries has had a number of elements which are broadly economic. Current British policies emphasise the relationship of higher education to the economy, reflecting human capital theory, and competition between institutions, reflecting notions of the 'market'. The 1997 UK Government White Paper on higher education introduced an explicit price mechanism--tuition fees payable by students--into the full-time undergraduate system. The article reports the results of a small-scale study of the views of enquirers interested in, and enrolled students on, similar pinT-time master's courses in three proximate institutions about their motives for studying and the impact of price and other factors on their choice of course. Part-time postgraduate provision is one area in which empirical evidence is available about the operation of price factors, since there is considerable variation in course fees. Since (ironically), national data do not capture details of part-time fee levels, studies have to be locally-based. The study suggests that whilst human capital theory explains their behaviour in the market, students are motivated mainly by non-pecuniary considerations, and that monetary benefits and price are not as critical factors as policy-makers appear to think.

Approximately 85,000 part-time teaching staff working in further education (FE) and adult and community learning (ACL) are often seen as 'a problem'. The intrinsic 'part-timeness' of these staff tends to marginalise them: they remain under-recognised and largely unsupported. Yet this picture is over-simplified. This article examines how part-time staff make creative use of professional autonomy and agency to mitigate problematic 'casual employment' conditions, reporting on results from Learning and Skills Development Agency-sponsored research (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006) with 700 part-time staff in the learning and skills sector. The question of agency was reported as a key factor in part-time employment. Change is necessary for the professional agency of part-timers to be harnessed as the sector responds to ambitious sectoral 'improvement' agendas following the Foster Report and FE White Paper. Enhanced professionalisation for part-time staff needs greater recognition and inclusion in change agendas.