A pledge by Labour to have half of young adults in university by 2010 is destined to fail, with new figures showing that the proportion has scarcely risen over the past eight years.

Despite the Government throwing hundreds of millions of pounds at widening university access and expanding degree courses, figures for the past academic year showed the proportion of 18 to 30-year-olds at university was just 39.8 per cent, up from 39.2 per cent in 1999.

The figures for men are worrying for Ministers, giving rise to fears that a generation of young men risks being “locked out” of university and marginalised over jobs.

Last year the proportion of young males studying for a degree fell to 35 per cent from 37 per cent in 1999. The only bright news for the Government is the rise in young women enrolling for degrees, from 41 per cent in 1999 to 45 per cent last year.

Overall, university participation dropped from a peak of 42 per cent of young adults in 2005. This can be attributed to a temporary surge in student numbers that year, as students rushed to enrol before the introduction of £3,000 top-up tuition fees in 2006. The long-term trend, however, remains decidedly flat.

David Willetts, the Shadow Universities Secretary, said that it would take ministers more than a century to reach their 50 per cent target at the current rate of progress. It was, he said, the equivalent of reaching in 2006 a target that had been set by Gladstone in 1888.

Mr Willetts said he was particularly worried about the widening gender gap in higher education, with the gap between the number of men and women applying to university widening fivefold under Labour.

“These shocking statistics show that many young men who could benefit from going to university are not getting the choice. It was not supposed to be like this,” he said. “We need to do far better to spread opportunities for young people to go to university. That means reform of our schools and changing attitudes to higher education, but under this government we are completely flat-lining.”

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, described the “minimal” increase over the past eight years as worrying and blamed the introduction of top-up fees for the lack of progress in the past two years. She said: “There is still not the evidence to support a theory that charging more for higher education is likely to encourage students, particularly from non-traditional backgrounds, to study at university.” Ms Hunt urged ministers to treat the figures as a warning when they review tuition fees policy next year.

But ministers said record numbers of students were going to university and emphasised that the fall from 42 per cent was a temporary blip caused by the introduction of top-up fees.

Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, said that acceptances and applications to higher education in England this year were at an all-time high, having recovered strongly, with 17,730 more students accepted in 2007. He said: “A year from now we expect the counterbalancing rises of 2007-08 to increase the participation rate.”

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