These are times of great opportunity and challenge for continuing education (CE) programs in colleges and universities. While lifelong learning remains central to CE's mission, means of promoting and delivering adult education programs through distance and online learning are undergoing tremendous technological transformation. Within institutions, CE units are increasingly collaborating with academic departments. In addition, demographic shifts have resulted in new audiences and types of programs offered, both credit and noncredit. School are pressured to increase their participation in economic development. All these changes carry administrative considerations. This volume suggests perspective and solutions for the challenges that must be successfully confronted by today's CE programs and the professionals who develop them. This is the 140th volume of this Jossey-Bass series. Noted for its depth of coverage, it explores issues of common interest to instructors, administrators, counselors, and policymakers in a broad range of adult and continuing education settings, such as colleges and universities, extension programs, businesses, libraries, and museums.

This book details criteria for determining quality in continuing higher education that are appropriate to colleges and universities, reasonable for adult learners, and practicable for continuing educators.

"Why is it that as we enter the twenty-first century, the nation's predominantly white colleges and universities continue to be settings where people of color feel unwelcome and marginalized? The contributors to this volume dissect a variety of structural and attitudinal factors that are prevalent in the higher education community, organizational constructs and value orientations which seem to hark more to the past than to the future. They comment on the political, social, and economic factors that have shaped academic culture, and buttressed its quietly efficient maintenance of racially discriminatory practices. "The American system of higher education is often regarded as the best in the world. Smith, Altbach, and Lomotey have edited a volume that implicitly asks how much better still it could be if it embraced people of color and provided them with a supportive and nurturing environment, one which encouraged them to reach their fullest creative and intellectual potential. Indeed, this will probably be the most significant challenge that the academy faces in the twenty-first century." — William B. Harvey, Vice President and Director, Office of Minorities in Higher Education American Council on Education, Washington, D.C.

Co-published with Colleges and universities are increasingly becoming significant sites for adult education scholarship—in large part due to demographic shifts. With fewer U.S. high school graduates on the horizon, higher education institutions will need to attract “non-traditional” (i.e., older) adult learners to remain viable, both financially and politically. There is a need to develop a better corpus of scholarship on topics as diverse as, what learning theories are useful for understanding adult learning? How are higher education institutions changing in response to the surge of adult students? What academic programs are providing better learning and employment outcomes for adults in college? Adult education scholars can offer much to the policy debates taking place in higher education. A main premise of this handbook is that adult and continuing education should not simply respond to rapidly changing social, economic, technological, and political environments across the globe, but should lead the way in preparing adults to become informed, globally-connected, critical citizens who are knowledgeable, skilled, and open and adaptive to change and uncertainty.The Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education provides rich information on the contemporary issues and trends that are of concern to adult and continuing education, of the programs and resources available to adult learners, and of opportunities to challenge and critique the structures embedded in the field that perpetuate inequity and social injustice. Adult education is a discipline that foresees a better tomorrow, and The Handbook is designed to engage and inspire readers to assist the field to seek new paths in uncertain and complex times, ask questions, and to help the field flourish.The Handbook is divided into five sections. The first, Foundations situates the field by describing the developments, core debates, perspectives, and key principles that form the basis of the field.The second, Understanding Adult Learning, includes chapters on adult learning, adult development, motivation, access, participation, and support of adult learners, and mentoring.Teaching Practices and Administrative Leadership, the third section, offers chapters on organization and administration, program planning, assessment and evaluation, teaching perspectives, andragogy and pedagogy, public pedagogy, and digital technologies for teaching and learning.The fourth section is Formal and Informal Learning Contexts. Chapters cover adult basic, GED, and literacy education, English-as-a-Second Language Programs, family literacy, prison education, workforce development, military education, international development education, health professions education, continuing professional education, higher education, human resource development and workplace learning, union and labor education, religious and spiritual education, cultural institutions, environmental education, social and political movements, and peace and conflict education.The concluding Contemporary Issues section discusses decolonizing adult and continuing education, adult education and welfare, teaching social activism, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and straight allies, gender and its multiple forms, disability, older adults and intergenerational identities, race and ethnicity, working class, whiteness and privilege, and migrants and migrant education.The editors culminate with consideration of next steps for adult and continuing education and priorities for the future.