Abstract
The dramatic growth in student numbersassociated with the shift from elite to masssystems across virtually all developedcountries is central to current transformationsin terms of structure, purpose, social andeconomic role of higher education. As a part ofthis process of expansion and heterogenization,new groups of students who, for a complex rangeof social, economic and cultural reasons weretraditionally excluded from orunder-represented in higher education, mightbe expected to participate in increasingnumbers. The paper develops the concept ofnon-traditional learners and demonstrateshow an examination of ways in which highereducation systems respond to such learners canprovide a fruitful basis for a comparativeanalysis of change in higher education acrossten countries – Austria, Australia, Canada,Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden,United Kingdom, and the United States. Theprimary emphasis in the study was on theinstitutional and policy issues which appearedto either inhibit or support participation bynon-traditional learners. On this basis sixfactors were identified which seemed to beparticularly influential with regard to theparticipation of non-traditional students andthe associated moves towards a lifelonglearning mode of higher education.
The evidence suggests that, while progress canbe reported on a number of dimensions incomparison with a similar analysis ofparticipation by adults students in the samecountries undertaken just over a decadeearlier, high participation rates do notautomatically imply that the functions ofhigher education in social selection andreproduction are obsolete, or that issues ofaccess and equity can be regarded as featuresof the past.
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Schuetze, H.G., Slowey, M. Participation and exclusion: A comparative analysis of non-traditional students and lifelong learners in higher education. Higher Education 44, 309–327 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019898114335
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019898114335