Adult Learning – Providing Equal Opportunities or Widening Differences? The Polish Case

ABSTRACT

Educational activity among adults is not only a key factor of social development but also one of the most important priorities of public policies. Although large sums have been earmarked and numerous actions undertaken to encourage adult learning, many people remain educationally passive, a particularly acute problem in Poland. We point to the main cultural and economic determinants of educational passivity: the family environment, education, low earnings and job. Based on several years of research conducted within the Study of Human Capital in Poland project, we conclude that the Matthew effect is visible in the field of adult learning: better-educated people increase their educational capital, moving further away from those with a lower level of education. Comparison of the levels of self-evaluation of competences between educationally active and non-active adults of various levels of education indicates that the highest increase in evaluation occurs among less educated people. Owing to this group’s very low level of education, however, the scale of using the potential for educational activity is very low. The outcome of this is that the opportunities created by adult educational activity are not exploited to reduce social differences and instead it sometimes reinforces these differences.

Keywords:

• adult education
• lifelong learning
• social inequalities
• educational activity
• skills
• cumulative advantages and disadvantages

8. Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ According to this classification, European states may be grouped in five segments based on their potential for human resources development. The classification is based on the organisation of work in companies, range of means designed to develop human resources and innovation index. Countries with a high potential for human resources development include Denmark, Germany and Sweden; among those forming a stable potential for human resources development are Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland. Poland, along with other Central and Eastern European states, is in the group of states with a low potential for human resources development (CEDEFOP 2012).

² This research was conducted in 2007–2008 by the Centre for Evaluation and Analysis of Public Policies of the Jagiellonian University. The qualitative part of the research entailed 40 in-depth interviews with adult residents of the Małopolska region, of varying levels of education and in differing situations on the labour market. Research was also carried out on employers and institutions offering training and education services for adults.

³ As Dolata’s (2014) research shows, parents’ level of education has an impact on the family’s socio-economic situation and also determines the educational opportunities of their children, which has a bearing in adult life on the jobs they get.

⁴ During the interviews, respondents were asked to designate on such scales their level of competences, comprising 12 general competences and 20 specific ones. We limit our analyses to the 12 general competences, which were also used in the whole research for estimating competence mismatches in the Polish labour market. The classification of competences adopted for the project was based on an extensive analysis of secondary data and expert interviews, and was acknowledged and applied in other research on the labour market conducted in Poland as well as in public policies, including those concerning higher education.