Beyond Fragments: Adults, Motivation and Higher Education

Adults now constitute the majority of students in higher education; what they bring to it, want and need are important questions in the development of a more responsive higher education. The author discusses the relationship between motives, education, and life history to explore how culture and history shape people and their motives for learning, taking into account variations in gender, social background and ethnicity, challenging the orthodox view that non-traditional students enter higher educational for vocational/material reasons.