Adult Higher Education: Thinking the Unthinkable.

Overview & Synopsis

The threats to adult higher education are rapidly becoming significant educational and social problems. To date, the hope of adult educators to become equal participants with other university divisions in higher education has not been realized. Simultaneous expansion and dilution of adult higher education have caused adult student demands for educational equality and cost sharing. In addition to student demands, a growing threat to adult higher education is the potential of being taken over by large corporations. Corporate interest in education comes at a time when universities find that their financial support is dwindling and that their major sources of support (government and business) are attempting to "decollegize" American society. Universities have responded by making education more relevant by offering vocational education and thus competing with the vocational programs of their major benefactors (corporate giants). Besides all the disadvantages universities have in this competition, they are moving away from their marketable commodity of academic credentials toward vocational ones. It is conceivable that universities might suffer if they became subsidiaries of large corporations by emphasizing vocational education. The loss of academic emphasis could have such a negative effect on the development of people's social consciousness as to be tragic. (EM)