Global perspectives on higher education and lifelong learners

<p>The global expansion of participation rates in higher education continue more or less unabated. However while the concept of <em>lifelong learning</em> has figured prominently in national and international educational policy discourse for more than three decades its implications for the field of higher education has remained relatively underdeveloped.</p><p>This book focuses on a particular dimension of the lifelong learning: higher education for those who have not progressed directly from school to higher education. Some will embark on undergraduate programmes as mature students part-time and/or distance students; others wish to return to higher education after having completed (or not completed) a previous academic programme while increasing numbers participate in postgraduate and continuing studies for a complex mix of professional and personal reasons.</p><p>Adopting a comparative and international longitudinal perspective which goes beyond a snapshot view by building on the cases of a core group of ten OECD countries this timely book investigates the ways in which important new developments impacting on higher education crystallise around the lifelong learning agenda:</p><ul> <li>new technology and open source resources;</li> <li>the changing role of the state and market in higher education;</li> <li>the blurring of public and private boundaries;</li> <li>issues of equity and access in a time of global economic turmoil;</li> <li>the increased emphasis on research and international league tables;</li> <li>the changing nature of the education; and </li> <li>the complex interaction of international national and regional expectations which governments and other stakeholders have of universities and other public and private institutions of higher education.</li> </ul><p>While focussing on the situation in Canada USA Japan Australia New Zealand and a wide variety of European countries the book also assesses the issues from the perspective of developing countries.</p>