P A R T
P A R T
P A R T
1 1 1
BY Joo-Hyun Park
Adult education, opportunity for higher education in Finland and Korea
Introduction
T
he purposes of adult education are said to be developing skills for today’s and future labor market, helping all adults to acquire basic skills and key competencies, and achieving non-economic goals such as personal fulfilment, improved health, civic participation, social inclusion, reduced levels of crime, and environmental protection. (Anna 2013.) It can be categorized into vocational, social, recreational and self-developmental aims. (Selman, Gordon et al 1998). In today’s knowledge society and worldwide competition, adult education aims to make adults adapt to changing technologies and learn and apply a new set of skills in order to meet the needs of the changing labour market. Specifically, as the OECD Skill Outlook (2013) states, the skill ability of a typical adult starts to decrease after the age of 30, but it can be alleviated by adult learning. Also, the demographic change to the aging society in many countries has brought the big issue of the quality of retied life and the change made it crucial to provide the elderly some learning programs.
76 / Education policy