With baby boomers now planning retirement, education in the “third age” will continue to expand. Teachers will need better preparation to meet the learning needs of older adults, but university departments that specialize in adult education have been under threat since the 1990s.
Increasing access to postsecondary education is a challenging problem with no easy solutions. But given Canada’s demographics and the rapidly changing nature of our economy, it’s a problem we cannot ignore. We can’t afford to be satisfied with current participation rates while key components of our population are ill-equipped to engage with the emerging social and economic realities of the twenty-first century.
A writer who took a close and critical look at academic publishing in 2005 turns his attention to trade publishing. And what he sees is even less pretty.