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Adult educators often have to work with a small budget; at the same time, they are committed to educational ideals. By examining the mission statements of German adult education centres (Volkshochschulen), the article shows how this tension between the ‘guiding institutions’ of education and cost-efficiency is reflected in the values of these education providers. The analysis shows that while adult education centres do refer to ‘education’ in their mission statements, they also mention, each in…
The article deals with cooperation under the perspective of governance from an organisational view. According to the variety forms of cooperation in the field of adult education, cooperation can be seen as a medium that adult educational organisations can use for their reproduction and coordination in different institutional environment. Based on empirical findings from a case study, it can be shown that organisations initiate cooperation for collecting resources and legitimation. So, organisat…
The relation between sustainability and widening access to adult learners in higher education is both well comprehensible and highly vague. Accordingly, and following the arguments of Seghezzo (2009) and Foster (2001), the paper aims to complement academic discourse on widening access of higher education by showing the benefit of using the concept of sustainability not merely as an operational measurement index or a learning topic content-wise. Rather, a different understanding of sustainabilit…
This article discusses the consequences of increasing access of non-traditional students to higher education (HE) in Sweden for society, individuals, and HE. The findings are based on a recently finished European Research Project called Access and Retention: Experiences of Non-traditional Students in Higher Education (RANLHE) with seven countries involved. First, an introduction about opening access to HE is presented, followed by a review of Swedish HE policy. Next is a presentation of the RAN…
The article deals with the question of organizations' internal control problems, which appear during the implementation of scientific continuing education, and how these problems relate to the implementation process and also to the general opening of universities for higher education to adult learners. Based on qualitative empirical results from a currently ongoing DFG project, three control problems are deployed and appropriate forms of action are demonstrated. The results provide evidence of …
