Funding cuts to colleges are causing "great big holes" in the approach to widening access to education, MSPs have heard.
Giving evidence to Holyrood's Education and Skills Committee, Dame Ruth Silver, chairwoman of the Commission on Widening Access, said the colleges situation is a "disaster waiting to happen".
She said failure to protect college budgets was behind the problem.
Former Labour leader Johann Lamont said to Dame Ruth: "We've seen the college sector cut. We've seen disproportionate cuts to part-time places so that young parents with caring responsibilities would not be able to do college courses."
The chairwoman replied: "That's what happens when you are not protected by the law and not protected by the Queen, you are the place where actually on the whole politicians turn to first to bring about change.
"It's not a protected budget and in not having that you are making great big holes in the stepped approach to widening access."
She added: "It's a disaster waiting to happen, but that's policy-led and funding-led."
Figures released by the Scottish Funding Council earlier this week revealed the number of full-time college places funded by the Scottish Government has fallen by more than 1,800.
Ministers hit the target to provide at least 116,000 funded full-time equivalent (FTE) places in 2015-16, but total places dropped from 119,023 the previous year to 117,204.
A Royal Society of Edinburgh report published last month found part-time college students have dropped by 48% in the past eight years, a change that "primarily affected women and over 25-year-olds", while full-time course places rose by 14% in the same period.
The Scottish Government's draft budget for 2017/18 plans to increase net college resource to £551.3 million from £536.6 million in the previous year's budget, but the Liberal Democrats claim college funding has been cut by £90 million in the past seven years.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: "We have increased college funding resource and capital by £41.4 million, 5.9% in real terms, in our latest 2017/18 Budget.
"Scotland's reformed college sector is improving young people's life chances and generating the skilled workforce needed for economic growth."
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