The Changing Nature of Graduate Education: Implications for Students in the Second Half of Life

Overview & Synopsis

Universities and graduate education are increasingly viewed as part of the emerging lifelong learning and education system and we see the evidence of this as the average age of graduate students increases. We are also seeing an increasing emphasis on education for employment in the lifelong learning and education literature, and this discourse is now infiltrating universities and graduate education; graduate education is increasingly referred to as graduate training and is being recast as vocational training. In this meditation I examine these changes in graduate education in light of the developmental needs of graduate students in the second half of life viewed through the lens of Jungian psychology, and discuss implications of the developmental needs of graduate students in the second half of life for graduate education. This is followed by examining the implications that changes in graduate programs have for graduate students in the second half of life.