Vice-chancellors have said they may need to cut hardship support for impoverished students and reduce outreach activities aimed at disadvantaged groups if the dire funding struggles at universities continue.

The anonymous poll of leaders by Universities UK (UUK) revealed the extent of the budgetary quagmire facing higher education, with more than two-thirds prepared to cut staff jobs by compulsory redundancy if difficulties continue over the next three years, while nearly 90% said they were looking at hiring freezes or voluntary redundancies.

Vivienne Stern, UUK’s chief executive, said: “If we want to retain world-class universities that deliver for students, employers and the economy, a serious conversation is needed about how degrees are funded and whether the governments’ share matches the value universities deliver for society.”

But the suggestion of further cuts in support for students, at a time when record numbers are living at home and working part-time to cope with rising prices, could make higher education inaccessible for those who most need it, experts said.

Nearly a third of vice-chancellors said they would cut hardship funding for current students if necessary, while more than half said they were prepared to cut access and outreach activity, aimed at encouraging students to go to university, over the next three years.

Lee Elliot-Major, a professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said: “A retreat from access and hardship funding risks pulling up the ladder on a whole generation at a time when growing numbers of students are facing unprecedented financial pressures and increasing uncertainty about the value of a degree.

“It would represent a huge waste of human potential at precisely the moment the country can least afford it. We’re in real danger of returning to an era in which university once again becomes the preserve of those advantaged enough to afford it.”

Katy Hampshire, director of programmes at the Sutton Trust, which campaigns to improve opportunities through education, said that cutting hardship funds could dramatically affect the lives of the poorest students.

“They’re more likely to have skipped meals to save on food costs, and missed lectures or deadlines to undertake paid work,” Hampshire said. “They also graduate with the highest levels of student debt compared to their more affluent peers. This is fundamentally unfair. Cutting hardship support would hit those with the least financial support hardest, and risk undermining their ability to succeed once they reach university.”

Cutting work on participation and outreach “risks widening access gaps between the most and least affluent young people that universities have spent years trying to close,” Hampshire added.

The vice-chancellors surveyed said that cuts could occur across the board if financial conditions worsen, including to research, buildings and maintenance, and that many are considering mergers or partnerships with other universities.

Earlier this month King’s College London announced it will absorb Cranfield University, the technology and management postgraduate institution based in Bedfordshire, in a sign that consolidation could become more common.

Jo Grady, the general secretary of the University and College Union, said: “Mergers and takeovers are not a solution to this crisis, they are a symptom. The governments and vice-chancellors now urgently need to listen to university staff, invest in jobs, shore up capacity and re-establish the UK as a global higher education leader.”

Alex Stanley, the National Union of Students’ vice president for higher education, said it was vital that universities made protecting their students a top priority.

“For the students, this comes alongside maintenance loans that haven’t kept in line with inflation while their costs, and their debts, continue to grow at astronomical rates,” Stanley said.