Human Resource Correlates of Older Adult Participation in Self-Selected Community College Settings.

Abstract

Adult educators are faced with the challenge of responding to the needs of an increasing older population. Of particular interest are strategies for recruiting older learners to programs in higher education. Historically, efforts to recruit older learners tended to focus on the utility of course content and on the importance of participation itself in the fulfillment of personal needs. The focus of this study was on the variables that influence the decision to participate in particular educational settings; either age heterogeneous, on-campus (traditional) or age-homogeneous, off-campus courses (non-traditional). Key concepts from the work of McClusky (theory of margin) and Gubrium (socio-environmental theory) are utilized in this study for the purpose of examining the older learner's capacity to participate in self-selected traditional and non-traditional settings. Older learner capacity to participate (power) was found to be significantly influenced by a variety of positive (resources) and negative (load) forces. Likewise, the learner's power tended to be related to the type of setting in which he or she enrolled. The findings suggest that adult educators should weight the relative advantages and disadvantages of recruitment strategies that empower older learners by either (1) reducing load by removing environmental barriers or, (2) increasing personal resources by focusing course content on issues that are particularly relevant to the life circumstances of the older population.