The benefits of university adult learning

ABSTRACT

There has been a debate over many decades concerning the benefits of lifelong learning that have been expressed both in economic and non-economic terms, the latter often expressed in terms of contributions to health and well-being, and to civic solidarity. The extent to which these benefits can be evidenced however remains somewhat elusive and at best mixed. In this paper, I trace the ways in which lifelong learning has emerged in policy discourse in the UK since the 1980s, the arguments and evidence for its benefits and the means by which it has been supported and implemented. In particular, the paper is concerned with the role of the higher education sector in the UK with a particular focus on Scotland.

KEYWORDS:

• Lifelong learning
• higher education
• wider benefits
• economic benefits
• health

1. Life before lifelong learning

There are a number of texts that trace the history of adult and continuing education provision in UK universities back to the late nineteenth century (Kelly 1992; Fieldhouse 1996; M. Freeman 2020a and 2020b). The predominant philosophy underpinning the offer was that of learning for its own sake rather than for some ulterior purpose, and ‘to teach and learn things because they are worthwhile in themselves’ (Hostler 1978, 134). The tradition that emerged, which Hostler traces back to Aristotle’s views on education,¹ became categorised as liberal adult education (LAE). I have previously summarised how this tradition emerged with the first courses being offered by the University of Cambridge in 1873 in order to offer university education to ‘working men’,² and over the next 100 years in UK universities LAE, having in the early days consisted of extension lectures, tutorial classes and seminars, morphing eventually to

… short courses, often evening classes of 20–30 hours in duration, that were open to all who wished to participate and were offered at modest fees and without any mandatory assessment. Courses were located both within universities and in out-reach centres often some distance from the parent institution. In many universities, provision took on a variety of other forms. For example programmes were established that focused on older adults, such as the University of the Third Age and a number of universities offered Summer Schools and Study Tours.

(Osborne 2002, p. 465)

Goldman (1999) traces in somewhat more detail the phases of development of university adult education from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century. He argues that

… perhaps no educational movement of the modern era in England has been so open and unapologetic in the pursuit of political objectives. That it was allowed to develop itself in this manner, using public funds for much of its history, is also an indication of the stability and maturity of the political culture it sought to change.

(p. 90)

He is referring to the core objective of much of the offer in the first half of the twentieth century which was linked to the advancement of the working class and notably was allied to the Workers Educational Association (WEA), the co-operative movement and to trade unions.

The sentiment that adult education in its various forms is a vital part of contemporary society has not disappeared. Notably, the Centenary Commission on Adult Education (2019) inspired by the Report on Adult Education published by the Ministry of Reconstruction (1919) in the wake of World War I, argues for the urgency of “universal and lifelong” access to adult education and learning’ … being … ‘as necessary now as it was in rebuilding our society in the aftermath of the War to End All Wars’ (p. 4). However, the Commission also argued that the balance between learning ‘in support of economic prosperity, on the one hand, and for individual flourishing, social and community development and democratic engagement on the other …’ had been wrong … ‘over the last 20 years at least’ (p. 6). In fact, we can go back another decade or more to locate the shift to economic imperatives and measurable outcomes.

2. Accountability rears its head – the age of credentialism, quality and flexibility

Whilst in previous generations, the issues concerned with standards, quality and value for money were seldom discussed, by the 1980s there was a concern expressed by many in the UK government about the effectiveness of universities and their contribution to the economy, a task that the Jarratt Committee (Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals (CVCP) CVCP (1985)) was asked to address. Accountability was of course in the spirit of the principles of the then government of Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. One of the outcomes of the report was the proposal to establish performance indicators for universities, amongst which was student achievement (Johnes and Taylor 1990).

The funding for University Continuing Education (UCE), albeit at the margins and a small proportion of government spend in higher education, was amongst those areas within universities where greater transparency was introduced. This occurred at a time when there was a transfer of responsibility to distribute funding on behalf of the government from the University Grants Committee (UGC) to the short-lived³ University Funding Council (UFC) in 1989. The establishment of the UFC for commentators of the time represented a diminishment of power for the universities by comparison to the UGC with ‘older arguments for institutional autonomy … subordinate to arguments about accountability and the right of government to determine policy when substantial government expenditure is involved’ (Shattock 1987, 485).

The primary challenge from 1989 and through the 1990s to universities for continuing education in the liberal adult education mode was one of accountability for the funding provided by UK Funding Councils. Ultimately, a key measure upon which accountability would be determined became enrolments on courses that carried credit at least to the level of first-year undergraduate studies, ostensibly a rather soft measure by comparison to outcomes, but still ultimately a challenge.

In parallel, pressure of another kind was applied to universities, who were challenged to diversify what they delivered. Whilst it could be argued that programmes within the LAE tradition were open to all, by the 1980s despite their past ambitions and achievements, there was little evidence that they were stimulating new demand for learning from those with little or no previous experience of HE and providing routes to employment.

These changes and their responses are summarised by Osborne (2003, 465–466).

Provision was extended beyond that of Liberal Adult Education (LAE) to categories that were termed ‘credit bearing’, ‘Access’ and ‘disadvantaged’. These latter two categories focused in a very explicit fashion on those adult students denied access to the university system for a range of situational and institutional reasons.

This focus on creating widening access programmes to undergraduate degree provision had already been a focus of attention for other parts of the higher education system within the then binary system of HE in the UK since the late 1970s. The polytechnics and higher education colleges in England and Wales, and the Central Institutions of Scotland, with their stronger vocational orientation by comparison to the ‘traditional’ academic university sector already had responded to calls for fairer representation of traditionally non-participating groups within the mainstream. Much of that provision had been undertaken in collaboration with the Further Education (FE) sector.⁴ The fact that both the vocation side of the binary line and the FE sector were controlled by local government was a strong facilitator of creating local opportunity in HE for targeted groups. Universities, largely autonomous in their operations, could not be levered by local government in the same way.

Some within the university sector were welcoming of this change of emphasis, arguing that the LAE tradition had moved away from its ‘historic values, … particularly its targeting of the working classes and also its commitment to “social purpose” adult education’ (Fieldhouse 1996). However, the fact that the university sector had been slow to respond to this change in focus in comparison to their counterparts in the vocationally-oriented polytechnics is significant. Whilst polytechnics (post-1992 universities⁵) reacted rapidly to the DES (1978) letter to local authorities to set up special preparatory courses to HE in the light of perceived skills shortages in vocations such as teaching and social work, and put particular focus on recruiting under-represented minority groups, the traditional university sector (pre-1992 universities) did little. A report of the Committee for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) reports,

… whilst many universities embrace the idea of widening participation with enthusiasm, there are others with a more limited commitment. The report for CIHE, Trends in Higher Education (1996), notes the differences between 1986 and 1993 and between pre and post 1992 universities with the ‘old’ universities having, if anything, reduced their percentage intake of students from lower social groups ….

(CIHE 1997, 8)

A number within the UCE sector argued that the changes in funding through the 1990s were highly damaging. The move towards funding being linked to enrolment on ‘credit-bearing’ courses saw an almost complete change from non-accredited LAE to mainstreamed accredited continuing education. The problems for those university departments offering LAE were exacerbated by a parallel decline in another significant income stream for their work that from local government, which in many cities and regions had been a supporter and financial contributor. However, by the early 1990s local government too was being reformed and having to cut costs, which included allocations made to community-based university LAE.

Universities in receipt of funding, mainly in the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, responded by introducing credit-bearing programmes, but that credit could be argued as being ‘roubles in a dollar economy’, and usually, the credit was not transferable even in the same institution. As I argue later, departments of adult education in traditional universities were in a position to re-purpose what they were doing to address the challenge to offer flexible learning routes, and to maintain their social purpose and historic legacies, but the majority could not respond to these and other challenges.

Another notable added stressor was that these departments also suffered from another accountability exercise also introduced in the 1980s, the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which later morphed into the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The RAE first operationalised in 1986 was a measure of the quality of research based on the assessment of research outputs, research environment and indicators of esteem, and was also part of a culture of accountability (Biesta 2004). An analysis of the third of these exercises in 1992 reveals how ill-prepared many departments of adult and continuing education were.

The experience of the 1992 research assessment exercise does not leave one with any grounds for complacency about the state of continuing education research in the universities of the United Kingdom. There are relatively few active researchers; not many of them compete successfully for research grants from significant grant-giving bodies such as the ESRC; there are hardly any full-time research students; it is difficult to think of many research-based British publications in Continuing Education which will continue to be cited in, say 10 years’ time; there are few research groups or research teams in Continuing Education which can be identified as building up an expertise and reputation in a particular area. British continuing education practice is scarcely touched by researchers; it is largely atheoretical. On the evidence before the Education panel in the 1992 exercise, continuing Education research … showed up badly when placed alongside school-based educational research. (Percy 1994, 21)

And whilst continuing education improved its contribution to the 1996 exercise (Gerver 1997), it is likely that a seed was sown within the management of universities that adult and continuing education units were not adding value through generating the potentially good income stream that a high-quality RAE rating would bring.

3. Access – the age of flexibility

Later in the 1990s, the Dearing Report on Higher Education (NCIHE 1997), other reports related to Further Education (Fryer 1997; Kennedy 1997) and a subsequent Green Paper, The Learning Age (Department for Education and Employment DfEE 1998) brought forward by the newly elected Labour government in response, all positioned post-school education as key in ensuring economic competitiveness. Access to higher education developed from provision largely in the form of programmes of preparation for higher education for adults to a wider range of other forms of flexibility, much of which was directed to young people. Tight (1998, 479) has analysed some of the strategies proposed in these reports, a number of which argue for structural flexibility in the form of a ‘credit accumulation system’, ‘credit transfer opportunities’, ‘pathways to learning’, and ‘clearly structured and recognised qualifications’. It is these fundamental elements of flexibility, namely modularity and credit accumulation and transfer systems, that presented a significant opportunity to departments of adult and continuing education to respond both to the challenge of offering credit for their provision and to the emerging focus on lifelong learning not only to address economic challenges but also as a key to a more socially inclusive higher education system.

It was, however, an opportunity lost to create flexible part-time provision for those who wanted it: universities in receipt of funding for credit-bearing continuing education did not have for the most part the willingness to create structural flexibility. As Trow (1999, 315) commented, when comparing US and European universities, the latter ‘move slowly towards modular courses and the accumulation of course credits, and even more slowly to credit transfer’.

There are of course a number of arguments against the accumulation of small bits of credit, notwithstanding the advantages to students in achieving recognised awards in the form of higher education certificates, diplomas and ultimately degrees. Costs are much higher in administering part-time provision; efficiency is higher when programmes are chunked into large units of credit. In the case of credit-bearing continuing education, the lack of transferability of credit to the most recognised of awards, the undergraduate degree, and the lack of opt-in by adults to assessment regimes created concerns in some universities about how they could justify provision in the face of an increasing focus on external quality assurance audit by government agencies. There was also genuine concern about the academic credibility of smorgasbords of bite-sized credits. Ultimately, the path of least resistance for most was to absorb the allocation of funding for credit-bearing continuing education into the mainstream and offer more traditional undergraduate provision. Inevitably, as a consequence, many departments (though not the universities themselves) lost a large chunk of core underpinning funding, and most faded away to be replaced by administrative units that offered unsubsidised short courses and the facilitation of widening participation programmes (though not with an exclusive focus on adults). By the twenty-first century, most adult and continuing education departments of old with their strong political and social purposes had disappeared. In so doing, it can be argued that a significant potential contribution to society has been lost, given what is known about economic and non-economic benefits both to individuals and society.

4. Forms of benefit

There is a considerable literature pertaining to the financial benefits of undergraduate level higher education both for individuals and for the exchequer. In England, for example, according to Britton et al. (2020),

The discounted difference in lifetime earnings between graduates and non-graduates is £430k for men and £260k for women. Once we account for differences in characteristics between those who do and do not attend HE, we obtain a discounted lifetime increase in gross earnings of £240k for men and £140k for women as a result of attending HE.

(p. 7)

Of course, net earnings are smaller, once tax and costs of the repayment of student loans are taken into account. There is also much variation according to the subject studied, attending a selective university and gender, with, for example, the creative arts providing close to zero or even negative private returns, whilst medicine for men produces on average £500k (though only £250k for women). The more selective universities on average provide greater returns for men though not women, and on average, four in five undergraduates will be better off over their lifetime in attending university. The gains to the exchequer in terms of tax paid are similarly variable and dependent on similar factors: gender, university type and subject studied.

However, when we consider the economic benefits of adult and lifelong learning, a number of other factors come into play, and the evidence suggests that direct personal benefits might be limited. At the beginning of this century, the OECD reported that ‘gains to society at large over and above those received by individual investors in lifelong learning’ might justify interventions, perhaps in the form of subsidies by government, but the ‘existence of such externalities is often asserted rather than supported by empirical evidence’ (OECD 2001, 46). In fact, there is some evidence that an investment in learning later in life reduces lifetime earnings (Wolter and Weber 1999). Furthermore, the OECD report (ibid, p. 145) also reports, when assessing participation in lifelong learning, that ‘rate of return and other forms of programme evaluation are plagued by the non-availability of data, the heterogeneous nature of provision, the often-informal nature of provision (as in many types of in-service training), the small scale of some demonstration programmes, etc’.

Nowadays, for accredited continuing education read micro-credentials. There are some differences structurally from the past, given that small chunks of credit can be gained through a variety of different delivery modes and through a variety of providers. Most significant have been the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), and the entry of private sector non-university entities into the market working in co-operation with universities. The rhetoric around micro-credentials is familiar and is couched both in terms of a contribution to addressing skills challenges as well as social inclusion, and as the OECD (2001, 3) reports, these awards are seen to offer an ‘all-purpose solution for the problems confronting education, training and labour market systems’. The difference now is that the idea of ‘stacking’ small amounts of credit has become a world-wide mantra and there is often routine use of micro-credentials by traditional students to fill credit gaps in their undergraduate programmes of study. However, the evidence of improved labour market outcomes for micro-credentials in their own right is mixed and conditional on two main factors: ‘firstly, the impact of the programmes itself, including length, area of focus and provider, and secondly, the impact of different learner characteristics, such as previous education, age, and gender (ibid. p. 6). A longer course appears to offer greater employment and wage benefits according to studies in a number of countries including, for example, within Singapore’s Workforce Skills Qualification credential system (Teo and Ying 2019). Further, it is those who are already advantaged through having prior educational qualifications at tertiary level who experience the greatest improvement in labour market outcomes. Nonetheless, in US studies, there is some evidence that certain occupationally specific short programmes taken by those without a bachelor’s degree are looked upon favourably by some employers (Baird, Bozick, and Zaber 2021).

Despite these pockets of evidence, it is still not easy to construct an argument for lifelong learning, especially for those beyond working life, on the basis of direct private economic benefits, and as Osborne and Edwards (2003) have suggested, ‘… benefits beyond the economic necessarily have and will play a key role in policy debate’. We have to consider other less tangible forms of wider benefit.

Non-economic benefits have been categorised in various ways that broadly can be categorised as personal and societal. These include the enhancement of psychological traits such as self-confidence, self-esteem, attitudes and motivation, health benefits, crime reduction, and increasing civic engagement, through, for example, volunteering with concomitant development of social solidarity (Panitsides 2014). In particular, there has been considerable research undertaken on benefits to health of learning in later life, many based on large-scale quantitative studies in the UK and beyond, and many of which have established a positive relationship with psychological well-being. Narushima, Shu and Diesterkampf (2018) have synthesised much of this literature, drawing on the work of amongst others Feinstein and Hammond (2004), Field (2009), Hammond (2004), Manninen et al. (2014) and Schuller (2004). The work of Jenkins and Mostafa (2015) – drawn from data in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing – is of particular interest since they found that psychological well-being of a cohort of older adults was enhanced by participation in non-formal non-credit bearing learning, whilst it was not through taking formal education and training. They conclude that, if courses are taken for purposes of leisure rather than obtaining qualifications, they are more likely to sustain participation and hence lead to improvements in well-being.

These benefits characterised as being non-economic of course may lead to wider economic benefits to individuals and society. For example, the Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning Field (2009) argued, based on an analysis of the British Household Panel Survey, that there is an impact on subjective well-being through engaging in lifelong learning that can be equated to a similar impact through an increase in household income. However, there is still a gap in the wider evidence base for non-economic benefits translating to economic impact despite the call in the IFLL’s final report (Schuller and Watson 2009, 6) for ‘a cross-departmental expenditure study as part of the next Comprehensive Spending Review, identifying cost efficiencies from a coordinated approach to lifelong learning’. Hughes and Adriaanse (2017, 24) have argued that adult education can save the National Health Service money, through reducing ‘demand for medication and clinicians’ time, thereby reducing sickness absence from work and, in many cases, delaying the need for residential care’. Whilst a potentially attractive narrative, the evidence base for this assertion is not extensive enough to yet make a compelling argument to policymakers and funders.

5. The twenty-first century university role

This paper is not arguing that universities should not be offering liberal adult education in its twentieth century form or indeed that some of this activity should not carry credit even if that credit does not lead to recognised qualifications. It may be that like a modern equivalent, micro-credentials, there is value of demonstrating achievement that complements traditional awards, particularly to enhance the possibility of employment or career progression. Some short credit-bearing courses may have cachet in their own right as signals to employers.

However, many adults, particularly older adults, do not want to be assessed and to gain credit for their studies. Yet they want the opportunity to engage in learning for reasons that are personal rather than professional. Over many decades, there have been many inventories created that list the reasons adults learn. Whilst professional development is clearly the most prominent of the factors, there are other key motivations that are associated with, amongst others, satisfying cognitive interest, a desire to socialise and to gain a sense of accomplishment. Furthermore, there is evidence of non-economic benefit not only to individuals but also wider society, and likely associated economic benefits even in the third and fourth age.

The main issue is who pays, and the balance between private, public and quasi-public contributions. UK universities for the most part lie in the quasi-public sector, formally non-profit-making entities with charitable status, but with a high dependency on state funding. There is much cross-subsidy in UK universities, notably from income from teaching to research. It has been estimated, for example, that in England in 2014/15, there was a deficit of £2.8bn in the real costs of research of which £1.4bn was covered by surpluses from teaching (Olive 2017, 26). It could therefore be argued that universities might provide education for those who want to continue learning in later life by subsidising at least some of its cost from activities that create surpluses, even in these times of economic stress, as a civic contribution. It is, however, perhaps naïve to think that this form of civic engagement would command support for subsidy in the same way as research, given the metrics by which university success is measured.

But there is also a vital role for government, and they make choices on the allocation of support. For example, at national level in Scotland a huge subsidy is offered to undergraduate students based on the principle that rather like schooling and health care, free higher education, as Sir Peter Scott (2024), Scotland’s Commissioner for Fair Access from 2016 to 2022, has stated, is for the current administration in Holyrood something that should come out of general taxation and is an expression of civic solidarity. Why, therefore, not a similar argument for learning in later life? In fact, in 2002, the Lifelong Learning Committee of the Scottish Parliament (2002) introduced the idea of a lifelong learning entitlement, a proposal that essentially sought to extend the credit equivalent of an undergraduate degree to provision that could be taken up over a lifetime. Individuals would have the opportunity to spend their credit in flexible ways, dipping in and out of learning. The scheme did not come into force and was somewhat silent initially on older learning (though its final report acknowledged the deficit). Arguably, amongst schemes put forward internationally for a lifelong learning entitlement, this was one of the most well developed. As Dunbar (2020, 16–17) reports there have been other initiatives around the world that have been utilised in an attempt to stimulate lifelong learning, including Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs), vouchers and tax incentives. The most mature and successful of these schemes, Dunbar argues, are in France and Singapore. However, as with less comprehensive schemes elsewhere, the focus is on those of working age only, and do not concern themselves with improving quality of life, except in the sense of labour market outcomes. The exception is in those societies where there is ‘super-ageing’, Japan being the primary example, and is illustrated in Article 3 of its Basic Act on Education:

A society must be brought into being in which the people can continue to learn throughout their lives, on all occasions and in all places, and in which they can suitably apply the outcomes of their lifelong learning to refine themselves and lead fulfilling lives.

(Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan, Of Education et al. 2021, 2)

It is also the case in jurisdictions of the UK that entitlements are age constrained. In England, for example, 2025 will see the introduction of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) (Department of Education 2024), but it will take the form of a loan, replacing two existing systems: higher education student finance and advanced learner loans. It has merits in as much as it includes a number of features of the scheme proposed in Scotland in (2002); it will support 4 years of full-time equivalent study, it will cross Further and Higher Education and can be applied to short modules of accredited learning rather than whole courses. On the flip side, it will be a loan, and there is an upper age limit of 60.

In Scotland, the entitlement is more generous. There is now partial support for credit-bearing provision for those who earn less than £25,000 per annum, and who take courses that range in credit from 30 to less than 120 SCQF (Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework) credits (i.e. the equivalent of 1 year of full-time study). A grant from the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) is available that for such programmes would cover from £321 (30 credits) to £1274 (120 credits) of fees. Credit-bearing short courses at an institution such as the University of Glasgow, a long-time provider of adult education in the LAE mode, typically costs £160 for 10 credits. On that basis, a SAAS grant would cover two-thirds of costs. So, whilst such an offer is not free to residents of Scotland in the way that full-time undergraduate study is, and is means-tested, it is perhaps not beyond the means of a proportion of the population. There is a caveat, however, in that courses in the 30–120 credit range are not widely available either at the University of Glasgow or elsewhere in the country. Most short courses directed towards adults do reach the crucial 30 credit cut-off point for support.

Focusing again on Scotland, the fact that there is no subsidy from SAAS for courses below 30 credits is a deficiency in the system, and even with that subsidy, affordability is still an issue for many in the population to pay a contribution to cost. It is not, for example, easy for someone on basic benefits or a state pension to dedicate limited resource to learning, no matter how strong our arguments are for its health benefits. The offer in England is less generous given that the entitlement takes the form of loans for tuition (up to £37,000, at today’s prices) and an additional maintenance loan. That aversion to debt increases with age and is higher for those in lower-socio-economic groups who are considering entry to higher education, have been long-standing observations (on which, see, for example, Osborne, Marks, and Turner 2004); it may be therefore by unduly optimistic to expect that adults will take up this offer. Furthermore, increasing evidence, particularly from the US, that student debt is negatively associated with certain health conditions also does not augur well (see Lippert, Houle, and Walsemann 2022), and sits in contrast with the health benefits of adult learning.

6. The options

The decline in provision for participation in adult education and training of course is not confined to the role of the university sector. A recent Institute for Fiscal Studies report (Tahir 2023) focusing on work-related training in the UK shows how since 2002–03 the real-terms public spending on adult training has declined by 31% up to the present day. The same report considers returns from public investment, which it argues are quite variable according to the type of qualification and offers cautions regarding certain low-level qualifications and returning to historical funding levels, but reminds us that individual monetary gains are not the only measure of value. The notion that there are other individual and societal benefits is the cornerstone for options in the university sector to enhance provision for adults throughout the UK: stronger state intervention by national government; enhanced local collaboration; and internal university cross-subsidisation.

First and foremost, we need a recognition of the value of liberal adult education. This is well expressed in the policies of one of the world’s most successful education systems, that of Finland, which integrates within national policy the importance of liberal adult education for people of all ages, all language groups, and underrepresented target groups so that they can become attached to society. The policy also recognises that LAE has an important role in building older people’s skills, especially digital skills, and making meaningful pastimes available for them, and emphasises the important role of lifelong learning in an ageing society.⁶ In Finland, LAE is offered by organisations other than universities, and is subsidised through national government and municipalities with some personal contribution. However, a voucher system for those at risk of exclusion, immigrants, pensioners and the unemployed allows a reduction in course fees or their waiver (Finnish Government 2021).

So too in the UK, there might be advocated stronger state intervention through extending grant aid to cover up to 100% of the cost for a certain amount of credit-bearing and/or liberal adult education each year, whether it be in universities or offered by other entities. This sounds like Individual Learning (or Training) Accounts or equivalents such as the SkillsFuture Credit programme in Singapore. There might, however, be greater effect if there were, unlike these schemes, no conditionality on support being only for those in work, or that courses themselves be work-related. Similarly, there might not be the conditionality of Finland related to being in a target group. There is, of course, an argument that many individuals are wealthy and can pay, but the contrary position, as laid out by Beresford (2013) in relation to means-testing more generally, is that this might be mitigated by the removal of the cost of bureaucracy in applying criteria for eligibility, and would enhance solidarity in society. Most importantly, the benefits in well-being might far outweigh the subsidy. There is certainly in Scotland little recognition nationally of such benefit. A recent literature review from the Scottish Government (2023) on adult lifetime skills, whilst addressing issues pertaining to lifelong learning as they apply to working adults, did not concern itself with the benefits of later life learning for those not seeking learning opportunity for employment purposes.

The role of local government and place is important, as is a return to collaboration between universities and regional/city administrations in the offer of a wide spectrum of provision of adult education. Historically in Scotland, some local authorities co-funded provision with their universities, but this suffered from the cuts of the 1990s. Continuing cuts in funding made available from central government (‘efficiencies’ of 3% annually according to the Scottish Government (2022) in a recent Resource Spending Review), and the challenges therefore in providing other essential services now make this difficult outside the context of City-Region Deals,⁷ though in these arrangements the lifelong learning component largely focuses on skills for jobs, and innovation. Community Education offered by regional authorities is currently limited in scope with largely and understandably a focus on adult literacy and ESOL with a smattering of other culture-based courses. Renewal of long-standing links with universities not only might broaden the offer but make it available in places where learning has found it difficult to penetrate. We might then move closer to the development of the Learning City model advocated so strongly by UNESCO that seeks to effectively mobilise resources across sectors to promote inclusive learning from basic to higher education.⁸

Further subsidy from universities themselves for wider categories of learners is perhaps the ultimate challenge. Asylum seekers and refugees often receive free entry to some credit-bearing short courses. This could be extended to those in receipt of state benefits and pensions, or we could go further and apply the arguments for unconditionality. This would be in keeping with the idea of the civic university and the original conception of liberal adult education and could be achieved at no cost if more academics were encouraged and rewarded to make contributions to service and civic engagement that included routinely contributing to adult education provision. I daresay many would swap their membership of the academic sub-committee of the Committee overseeing committees for the opportunity to offer a public lecture or even a short course centred on their research and scholarship. This is key – we need provision of adult education from universities based on our distinct expertise and a reflection of the scholarship we possess, not an offer that could potentially be found elsewhere. That is not to say that many academics do not already serve their communities, but the fact that this is described as ‘third mission’ is significant.

7. Conclusion

On a positive note to conclude, provision available to adults in UK universities is complemented by courses marketed as micro-credentials and MOOCs, some of which are free at the basic level. Also, in a less formal way, there has been increasing focus on public engagement work in our universities, which complements formal programmes through lectures and debates offered, for example, by university museums and galleries, and science cafés. The picture therefore is perhaps not calamitous in some universities. However, there is more that could be done. Ultimately, a mixed economy to support the provision of adult learning does require the state, local authorities and universities to work in unison. Of course, this triple helix needs another dimension to make it quadruple: adults themselves in our communities, and the means in place for them to make demands on the shape that provision might have.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Aristotle states in Book 8 of Politics that ‘there are branches of learning and education which we must study merely with a view to leisure spent in intellectual activity, and these are to be valued for their own sake’, but of course, he is speaking of ‘free men’. Slaves and women are another matter. See a translation at https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.8.eight.html, and Nightingale (2001).

2. Goldman (p. 93) does point out that university extension lectures were offered ‘in genteel county towns as well as manufacturing centres, and thus drew in women, both those with little formal education in the latter places and those prevented from going to university by personal circumstances or prevailing attitudes in the former location’. The fact that these were mainly middle-class women, he argues, was the reason for a re-focus on tutorial classes to attract working class men.

3. The Further and Higher Education Act 1992 replaced the UFC with three separate funding councils for England, Scotland and Wales, each explicitly charged with funding of HE against priorities set by government. Later, legislation from 1998 to 2008 devolved responsibilities for HE to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and in England from 2018 there have been three separate bodies overseeing different aspects of the HR offer – the Office for Students, UK Research and Innovation, and the Office for Fair Access (see Atherton, Lewis, and Bolton 2023).

4. A sector within the UK that offers both non-advanced and advanced vocationally orientated provision to young people post-16 and adults at levels up to the equivalent in credit terms of the first two years of an undergraduate degree.

5. A post-1992 university refers to a former polytechnic or central institution awarded university status following the Further and Higher Education Act of 1992 or a university established since 1992.

6. I am grateful to Petra Heikkinen from the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland for a translation of this text.

7. See https://www.gov.scot/policies/cities-regions/city-region-deals/ ‘City Region Deals are packages of funding agreed between the Scottish Government, the UK Government and local partners. They are designed to bring about long-term strategic approaches to improving regional economies, aiming to help harness additional investment, create new jobs and accelerate inclusive economic growth’.

8. See https://www.uil.unesco.org/en/learning-cities.