ADULT STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: MYTHS AND REALITIES

Although there has been significant growth of adult students in higher education, few strategies have been designed to enhancing faculty and staff beliefs and knowledge regarding adult undergraduate students. This article presents CASHE (Characteristics of Adult Students in Higher Education), an instrumentation strategy for self examination of personally held beliefs and knowledge regarding adult learners. Preliminary research on the use of this instrumentation among community college and university personnel is discussed. Findings suggest differing perceptions between these two collegiate settings, as well as between student personnel staff and instructional faculty.     

SURVEYING ADULT EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA

One of the results of a lack of overall co‐ordination of adult education in Australia is a very incomplete record of activities. Attempting to use existing data for research can be a very frustrating business. The form of the material available varies from State to State, is incomplete and uneven in quality. The peripheral nature of adult education in relation to education as a whole often results in only brief mention in official reports or no comment at all. The voluntary area, due for the most part to the spontaneous and informal nature of many agencies, is particularly poorly recorded. This paper discusses some of the problems facing researchers and brings together existing studies which have attempted to survey arrangements for the organisation and administration of adult education on a national basis.     

ADULT HIGHER EDUCATION IN SWEDEN

Wider access of adults to higher education is one of the objectives in promoting the rôle of higher education especially in the context of lifelong education and democratization of higher education.

We give below information on adults’ participation in Swedish higher education as well as institutional provisions for this group.     

EVALUATION IN ADULT EDUCATION BROADCASTING

The paper suggests that a useful step towards linking research with decision‐making is to attempt some working definitions. “Evaluation” simply means setting a value to something: in this case a learning process, provided or supported by educational broadcasting. “Research” is a more slippery word, meaning different things at different times. Here it is taken to mean any systematic collection of evidence, designed to test a hypothesis or to answer specific questions, which evidence can be used in the making of future decisions. So evaluation is a purpose and research is a method. It is hoped that the method serves the purpose.

This largely depends on its success in answering three basic questions: Are the objectives clear and likely to be useful? Are the methods effective and manageable? Are the applications practicable? The paper considers these questions in relation to the two main styles of evaluation in adult education: formative and summative.