In a move designed to help widen access to non-traditional students, UCD is to provide fully flexible courses from next year.

Under the new arrangements, mature students, single parents and others will be able to opt in and out of courses in all faculties as they wish. Degree courses will be broken up into smaller, more manageable units which can be taken by students at different levels, according to their individual needs.

Last night, the UCD president, Dr Hugh Brady said: "We are going to change and change big."

"We can no longer expect a single parent from an economically disadvantaged area to move through college in the same way and at the same pace as an 18-year-old fresh out of a south Dublin private, fee-paying school," he said.

Students could, for example, opt to take 50 per cent of a first-year arts or business course, gain a credit and complete the course at a later stage.

UCD says it will also ensure that the courses are delivered at times which best suit adult learners.

Dr Brady said he was committed to changing the student profile at UCD so that it becomes more international and more socially inclusive.

From September 2005, UCD programmes "across all faculties will be fully semesterised, modularised and credit-based - a first in Irish higher education."

The new measures were unveiled by Dr Brady who said that the benefits of education must be made available to all sections of society in "more appropriate and accessible" formats.

The adult education programme at UCD is the largest of its kind in the State, with over 5,000 students annually. Dr Brady announced the new measures in an address to mark the end of the Sample UCD week, where adults of all ages and backgrounds were invited to sample what is on offer at the college. Over 3,000 people attended the event this year.

In his address, Dr Brady said there had been a regrettable tendency to see university as the preserve of the few.

"I would put my hand up and acknowledge that UCD for much of its history could have been a more welcoming place" for non-traditional students.

The UCD initiative is part of a concerted move by the university sector to widen access.

Last month, Trinity College Dublin announced it was introducing a 15 per cent quota for "non-traditional" students from next September.

Many other universities, notably NUI Maynooth and the University of Limerick, also have extensive access programmes. In his address, Dr Brady said there had been an unfortunate tendency to scapegoat universities "for problems of inequality in society which run much deeper and which will never be satisfactorily resolved unless those deep issues of poverty and inequality are properly addressed."

In announcing the move, Dr Brady is delivering on a commitment first made in his inaugural address five months ago.