'Opening Higher Education to Adults' Workshop, Berlin, 30 November 2012

On Friday 30th November, the Director of HERC, Professor Maria Slowey contributed to a symposium reporting on the draft findings from the EC Project 'Opening Higher Education to Adults' in Bonn, Germany. The seminar was organised by the German Institute for Adult Education – Leibniz Centre for Lifelong Learning (DIE), Bonn and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The aim of the workshop was to validate the key findings and conclusions of the EC funded study “Opening Higher Education to Adults” (HEAD) which should lead to recommendations for planning future EU policies to provide support to opening up HE especially to those who have not been previously engaged in HE. 

As part of the HEAD project, HERC was responsible for two country studies (Ireland and the UK) and also one additional case study from Russia on best practice examples of opening higher education to adults. The broad themes of the country studies include the background research on the following: 

•  Definitions of ‘adults’ in HE and specification of target group of adult learners in HE

•  Regulatory issues and policies at national, regional and institutional level (e.g. access and admission to HE, funding of HEIs, student grants/loans)

•  Barriers for opening HE to adults (historical and contextual)

•  Drivers for the enhancement of adult learners in HE (eg. labour market policy, educational policy, demographic change) 

Following presentations by key figures in the HEAD project, the session broke out into three workshops:

Workshop A: Success factors for opening higher education and higher education institutions to adult learners

Chair: Dr Walburga Freitag

This workshop focused on the findings of the HEAD study in relation to factors that facilitate or inhibit adult participation in higher education. A range of factors were identified that confirmed existing findings from previous research. Yet the findings of the study opens a new perspective, as some factors that were identified can be ascribed to different levels of action – governmental, institutional, and individual. The workshop discussion focused on the validation of these findings.

 Workshop B: Transferability of good/best practice of flexible delivery of higher education programmes and learning provisions

Chair: Dr Helmut Vogt

The workshop focused on the findings from a compilation of 20 examples of higher education programmes, which were analysed by cooperating national experts from different European and non-European countries. The case studies illustrated that flexible delivery of higher education programmes, which facilitate the inclusion of so-called non-traditional students in higher education require  didactical and organisational flexibility as well as supportive institutional structures and regulatory frameworks and financial sustainability  at national level

Workshop C: Policy implications for opening higher education and higher education institutions to adult learners, i.e. non-traditional adult learners

Chair: Prof Katarina Popovic

The workshop concentrated on policy implications for opening higher education and higher education institutions to adult learners. It focused on the findings of a study concerning the definitions of “adult learners” in higher education, statistics on adult education research and the openness of higher education systems towards adult learners in relevant European countries within the project.