Parents, partners and peers: bearing the hidden costs of lifelong learning

Abstract

This paper examines data from three projects to explore the ‘hidden costs’ of participating in lifelong learning. Whilst other potential risks (financial for instance) are anticipated, those around family and friendship ties are usually not. Adult re-engagement with education can result in unexpected negative consequences for learners’ existing relationships, something addressed in academic literature but rarely in official policy rhetoric. We draw upon data from the projects to demonstrate how these unanticipated risks are negotiated and the impact of this discursive practice on those involved. We discuss this sense of risk, and also concepts of entitlement to one aspect of lifelong learning, higher education (HE) amongst those traditionally excluded from it in the UK. Entry to HE alone does not secure either a sense of entitlement, or a reduction of risk in terms of social justice, viewed as a means of fairly redistributing opportunities to compete for credentials. For some non-traditional learners, their sense of a lack of entitlement and levels of loss and risk to identity increase as they participate in university. We conclude by discussing how these ‘hidden costs’ of lifelong learning are borne by learners and those closest to them, their parents, partners and peers, and how institutions may offer support through processes of transition to adult learner.

Notes

1. ‘NEETs’ refer to people aged 16–24 classified by the UK government as ‘not in education, employment or training’.

2. UNISON is the UK’s largest trade union with membership from across the public services. Learning at Work courses offer opportunities for members least likely to access existing training provision including women, part-time workers, black and minority ethnic groups and low paid manual workers. UNISON works with a national educational provider, the WEA (Workers Educational Association), which provide tutors for the programme.

3. The Return to Learn programme is similar to Learning at Work run by UNISON and the WEA.

4. The Open University was the world’s first distance teaching university and began in the UK in the 1960s.

5. This term now refers to the UK’s former polytechnics and colleges of higher education, university status in 1992.

6. Secondary modern schools were created under the tripartite system in England and Wales, and later Northern Ireland, lasting from the 1944 Education Act until the introduction of the comprehensive school system in the 1970s. The three types of state-funded schools were grammar, secondary technical and secondary mode.

7. For some Native Americans the eagle feather symbolises an important rite of passage. It continues to be worn at graduation ceremonies in some North American high schools and colleges as a symbol of achievement.