It is time to review the schedule for the placement of your session in the AAACE Agenda. This is the final draft of the Schedule. When you look up your name, use the detail listing to check what days/times you asked to be placed. This is a huge program and we can accommodate necessary changes in day and time now, but may not be able to do so after September 1, 2013 except in emergencies. Please carefully check your placement and send any requests to Ginger Phillips, AAACE Conference Planner with AAACE Session Change Request in the subject line. We will respond to your email, but it may take us up to a week to do so. Thanks for your help in "fine tuning" this agenda!
Why Working Adults Participate in Continuing Higher Education: An Integrated Analysis
Type of Presentation
Roundtable Discussion (45 minutes)
Session Abstract
This paper examines how working adults’ personal backgrounds including expectations, workplace contexts, and learning experiences (i.e., formal, non-formal, and informal learning) influence their participation in continuing higher education.
Target Audience
This study will be beneficial to those who are interested in adult continuing education/learning. Given this study focuses on working adults and their participation in degree/certification programs through higher education institutions, HRD professionals, administrators in colleges/universities, or policy makers who have an concern about the continuing work-related learning of employees/non-traditional adult students can be target audiences. Moreover, researchers who are interested in quantitative research and those who are seeking to analyze large national data set to study adult continuing education/learning topic are welcome to attend.
Learning Outcomes
Audiences will be able to learn how diverse factors in multiple contexts including learning experiences over individual backgrounds influence working adults’ enrollment in universities/colleges. Whereas there have been limited studies providing empirical evidences for continuing education, this study will provide advanced knowledge by suggesting integrated framework to understand working adults’ continuing higher education. Importantly, this study integrated diverse types of learning experiences (i.e., formal, non-formal, and informal) which have been largely discussed as an important concept in adult continuing learning. Audiences will be able to learn the relationship between diverse learning experiences that lead to working adults’ continuing higher education.
Session Description
This study employed the Adult Learner’s Work-Related Education Survey conducted in 2003 as a part of the National Household Education Survey collected for the National Center for Educational Statistics. By utilizing logistic regression analysis, initial findings showed that the effect of some individual level variables disappeared once workplace context were taken into account in the regression model. For example, female-workers were more likely to attend colleges when considering individual context only, but this effect became no longer significant after entering workplace factors such as employment status, occupation types, and career level. Moreover, we found that career expectation and non-formal learning (i.e., apprenticeship, on the job training) in the workplace significantly increased the odds of enrolling in work-related degree programs in universities/colleges. The round-table session, that provides us a comfortable dialogue and enough time, will allow us to discuss the findings in depth and find the implications for future research.
Efforts are made to try to schedule sessions on the day preferred by the Primary Presenter, though this cannot be guaranteed. Please check your preference.
Thursday November 7