Adult Education and You
Adult education is becoming an increasingly appealing and facile option for adults who feel as though they’d benefit from either returning to college or going for the first time. The time-honored norm of going straight from high school is being tried and tested, and the options available to those wishing to balance a college education with their daily lives are ever increasing and extremely diverse. There is little doubt that the trend in college education is moving more and more towards catering to adults.
According to the US census bureau, in 2005 there were 20,839,000 students aged between 31 and 40, and 21,983,000 between 41 and 50. If we compare this to the total number of students between the ages of 16 and 30 (25,040,000), it’s easy to see how important adult education is becoming within the marketplace of college education. In addition to the aforementioned age brackets, there were 25,977,000 students over the age of 51 in the education system in 2005. Perhaps an even more interesting statistic is evident in the fact that of the 93,939,000 students in 2005, 58,748,000 of them were married, and even more interestingly, 26,746,000 of them had children under the age of 10 in the household. This shows a sharply increased trend in adult education for those who already have significant life commitments, such as caring for children.
So, how do we explain this increasing trend in adult education: what factors come into play in rendering the process more facile for those with other commitments? First and foremost, it is a matter of technology. Technologies exist now that make a tertiary education possible for people who but 20 years ago would have had little or no access to adult education courses because of their location or responsibilities. Distance education such as online courses, audio and video courses, night classes – all of these these options help to furnish single mothers, widows and widowers, busy couples, married or not, and a whole slew of other non-tradition adult group the opportunity to pursue their dreams and interests.
The best thing about adult education is that it in no real way usurps those students who choose to pursue the traditional, well-established avenue of going straight to college from school. Rather, it enriches their college experience by allowing them to engage in dialogue with people who have disparate life experiences and thus a different approach to the course. Adult education is on the rise, proving it’s never too late (or too hard) to learn something new or open a new chapter in your life.
