PRELIMINARY FINDINGS ON DESIGNING HIGHER EDUCATION PROGRAMS FOR OLDER PEOPLE

This preliminary study explores how older people think higher education programs should be designed to meet their needs. Findings presented suggest that older people prefer existing college curricula, age‐integrated and group structured education.     

CAREER EDUCATION FOR OLDER PEOPLE

Though they need help, most people who are over 60 have an aversion to welfare as such and want to work. Most older persons find their pensions and/or social security benefits rapidly eroded by inflation and need some supplemental income. Similarly, many need to be sought out, assisted, and counseled back into active involvement in their own lives and that of their community. Career education, particularly directed at training older people to work in human services, the work of helping others, is viewed as a plausible, viable concept. It can help many older adults “retire to” rather than “retire from” and help them help themselves, their peers, and others. This paper encourages new and/or second careers for many older people.     

PARTICIPATION IN EDUCATION BY OLDER PEOPLE

This paper brings together current knowledge on the encouragements and constraints affecting educational participation of older people; it reports the finding from a study of active older participants that content and sponsorship are the most important reasons for educational participation.     

NEW ROLES AND NORMS FOR OLDER ADULTS THROUGH HIGHER EDUCATION

A growing number of older adults develop new roles and identities in their retirement years. They may be trend‐setters in creating new norms for future generations of retirees. Research conducted by the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement at the University of North Carolina at Asheville on middle‐class, well‐educated retirees with professional or managerial prior work roles indicates that these retirees want volunteer, leadership, and learning opportunities. A study of 101 alumni of the center's leadership for seniors program showed how institutions of higher education can play a prominent part in facilitating the development of roles and norms that often transcend the general public's ideas of what retirees can do and contribute.     

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION NEEDS ASSESSMENT OF OLDER AMERICANS: METHODOLOGY AND SOME FINDINGS

This study reports on the interest of a sample of senior citizens (55 years and over) in enrolling in different types of vocational courses and their overall educational needs in relation to sex, race, educational attainment, and preference for course location. Vocational training and placement opportunities for older persons can mean outreach services, support services, and accessible institutional and community‐based programs. The research findings could lead, not only to the development of an approach to providing vocational education opportunities, but also to ways of encouraging greater use of older adults as teacher aides and resource persons in the classroom.     

关于高等教育公平与效率的思考

教育公平主要包括教育权利平等和机会均等两个方面。目前 ,由于诸多因素的影响 ,在我国存在着事实上的教育不公平 ,高等教育领域也表现出种种不公平的现象。通过对这些不公平现象的分析 ,本文对高等教育公平与效率进行了理性的思考 ,提出在教育资源紧张的情况下必须坚持“效率优先 ,兼顾公平”的原则 ,同时必须通过制度安排和政策调整来增进教育公平。     

CONSIDERATIONS OF DEMOCRATIZATION AND ELITISM IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

The year, 1992, has been one of bewildering change in British higher education caused primarily by government planning and intervention which has as its motor a complex political agenda. In this article, the authors concern themselves with one of these changes: the apparent move towards the democratization of higher education. The likely effect of this change is then assessed for all sectors of the British population and in particular for the linguistic and ethnic minority groups constituted by recent immigration into the country.     

LEADING GROUPS OF OLDER PEOPLE: A DESCRIPTION AND EVALUATION OF THE EDUCATION OF PROFESSIONALS

With the substantial growth of an aging population, professionals in gerontology need to know how to work with groups of older people. Group work has become a popular means of helping the elderly, for example, to cope with losses (support groups) and to engage in social activities with peers (groups in day centers) as well as to support caregivers of dementia patients (caregivers' groups). We started group interventions to relieve loneliness among older people and developed long-term training to enhance the group leadership skills of professionals and to promote their self-reflection capabilities. Our training process consciously took advantage of constructive learning theory and a reflective learning model. The education process used modern activating learning methods to attain its goals. In this article we describe the main steps of this educational process and show the results of the trainees' evaluation, how they experienced the training process, and how the learning objectives were achieved.     

USSR: UPGRADING AS A PART OF LIFELONG EDUCATION AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO DEMOCRATIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Upgrading of professional knowledge and skills is an important factor in the concept of lifelong education. The following article tells how this important component is integrated into the USSR's higher education system. The article is based on a paper presented by Professor Dimitri Vasilyev, Head of the Department of Executive Teaching and Research Personnel at the Ministry of Higher and Specialized Secondary Education of the USSR, during the Consultation for the Preparation .of a Study on Recurrent Education and its Contribution to the Democratization of Higher Education in the Context of Lifelong Education, which was held at Unesco Headquarters in Paris on 23 and 24 April 1979.     

ENTRY AND EXIT PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION: SOME POLICY AND RESEARCH ISSUES

The recent re‐emergence of an interest in the relationships between A levels and degree performance can be viewed in the context of the work of the planning bodies for higher education, and the associated drive to secure reliable performance indicators for planning purposes. However, a number of tacit but questionable assumptions can be seen to underlie the traditional model of students’ performance at the points of entry and exit. Once those assumptions are recognised, implications follow for policy and for decision‐makers, whether in institutions (such as admissions tutors) or outside institutions, in central planning and resource allocation bodies. What might appear to be a purely technical debate amongst statisticians turns out to be intimately connected with contrasting conceptions of higher education.     

SOME PROBLEMS OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN GERMANY

The underlying premise of this article is that the best way to become acquainted with higher education in Germany is to discuss its problems. Such problems as expanding enrollments, the role of research and teaching, the link between higher education and future employment, the question of the supposed equality of German universities, the link between regional development and higher education, and the question of the duration of studies are briefly discussed in light of the tension between the universities and the Fachhochschulen. The hint is made that the Fachhochschulen are more successful pedagogically than are the universities.