Running head: WHY NON-PARTICIPANTS DO NOT PARTICIPATE

Why Non-Participants Do Not Participate D.M. Shelley Moody Colorado State University Adult Education EDAE 520-804 Dr. Tobin Lopes October 26, 2013

WHY NON-PARTICIPANTS DO NOT PARTICIPATE Why Non-Participants Do Not Participate With the trend of more and more jobs requiring post-secondary education, you would expect the high school graduates to flood our community colleges and universities at record

rates. You would also expect more students to graduate from high school. Neither of these is the case. The focus of this paper is to discuss various reasons why there are so many adults who are not participating in adult education. We will begin by defining some terms that will be used throughout this paper. Ginsberg & Wlodkowski (2010, p. 26) define the following terms: Participation: partaking in some form of adult education Formal learning: sanctioned learning for credits or certification Informal learning: independent and self-directed, not formally sanctioned Nonformal learning: workshops or training without credits or certification Workplace learning: learning geared toward improving skills, attitudes, or behaviors through or within the workplace Adult education consists of any one or more of formal, informal, nonformal, or workplace learning. Based on the above definitions, a participant is someone who decides to join into adult education. According the to 2010 U.S. Census (State and County Quick Facts, n.d.), 85.4% of all adults aged 25 and over are at least high school graduates and 28.2% have attained at least a bachelors degree. While this data does not specifically state how many participate, based on the 2010 census data we know that participation in adult education is between 28.2 and 85.4%. So who are the participants? According to Ginsberg & Wlodkowski (p. 27), the profile of the typical participant in nonformal and formal education is:

WHY NON-PARTICIPANTS DO NOT PARTICIPATE White or Asian American Between 45 and 54 years old Annual income greater than $75K Professional or masters degree White-collar worker

Formal workplace learning is the single largest area of adult education with 46% of the U.S. workforce participating. My personal experience with formal workplace learning indicates that, at least in my service area, there is no typical profile of participants. Over the past three years I have seen quite a shift in participants. In the beginning they were predominantly White, spoke English as a first (or only) language, were between 40 and 50 years old, and had 10 to 30 years with their current employer. In the past year the demographics of the participants have changed drastically. They are fairly equally split among White, Black, Asian and Middle Eastern. They range in age from 22 to 52. Many have degrees in engineering, education, chemistry, marketing, or business. Some of them have associates degrees and only a few have no degrees at all. Many of them speak English as a second, third, or even fourth language. Most of these learners have less than one year with their employer. So why is there such a huge difference in participants in such a short span of time? The largest employer in our area is building several new plants and adding over 800 jobs to staff the expansion. They are hiring new engineers, technicians, and operators by the dozens. Many of the engineers were international students who graduated from U.S. universities, while many of the technicians and operators were working in the education or business field and left their fields to make more money in the chemical industry.

WHY NON-PARTICIPANTS DO NOT PARTICIPATE While workplace learning is more accessible and economical for the participant by the very nature of being coordinated and paid for at least in part by the employer, there is a demographic group that tends to be non-participatory. Generally speaking, they are profiled as follows: (Ginsberg & Wlodkowski, 2010) Hispanic Annual income less than $30K High school diploma at most Blue-collar or service industry worker

So why are the non-participants not participating? If you ask ten different people you will probably get ten different reasons. One of the most cited reasons is socioeconomic. Those who are non-participants typically come from lower income families whose parents were also non-participants. Many non-participants fall into the category of generational poverty, that is, poverty that is passed down from generation to generation. Children growing up in povertystricken homes are less likely to have parents who are supportive of their educational efforts. The parents are so focused on meeting the basic physiological and safety needs of the family (Figure 1) that there is little time, energy, or desire to address the other higher order needs of themselves, much less those of their children. (Burton, 2102)

WHY NON-PARTICIPANTS DO NOT PARTICIPATE

Figure 1. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

In addition to the lack of educational encouragement and support, there is a lack of positive occupational role models. In a study conducted by Beegle (2003), when respondents were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up when they were children, they named the types of jobs with which they had come in contact which were primarily blue-collar and service oriented jobs. One was quoted as saying I just wanted to survive and grow upI never considered myself to be worthy to be anything. (Beegle, 2003, p. 13) These poverty-stricken children, who had little educational encouragement and support and few good occupational role models, are also forced to learn in a school system that was designed for, taught by, and filled

WHY NON-PARTICIPANTS DO NOT PARTICIPATE

with the middle and upper class. At school they are excluded, ignored, and ridiculed. They go to bed hungry, wear second-hand clothes, and sometimes do not even have a place they can call home. Their familys immediate need for them to work to bring in money outweighs their longer-term need for an education. As a result, these children are more likely to drop out of school before graduating from high school, making it much more difficult for them to pursue adult education later in life. This becomes a vicious cycle as they are often doomed to repeat the lives their parents led, holding down low-income jobs and struggling to meet their basic physiological and safety needs while pushing their educational needs aside. There was a girl in my high school P.E. class who came from a very low-income family. Her clothes were worn and torn, her hair was greasy, her teeth were covered in plaque, and she had a very bad odor about her. I regret to say that I treated her just as my classmates did, avoiding her and sitting as far away from her as I could. I do not know the details of her situation, but she and her struggles came to mind that she was the very type I would tag as a nonparticipant in adult education. Other barriers to participation in formal education are situational. That is, the situations with which the non-participants are faced cause them to remain non-participants. These situations include time, money, and transportation. (Kaimakami, Panta, & Maria, 2008) The time aspect is impacted by time spent at work, time spent taking care of the children, or the conflicting times between work and coursework. Either there is not enough time to participate in adult education or the scheduled time of the education conflicts with their work schedule, making it very difficult to carve out time in which to participate. The immediacy of work and family push education further down the priority list if education even makes the list at all.

WHY NON-PARTICIPANTS DO NOT PARTICIPATE The money aspect is impacted by income, cost of tuition, cost of paying child care while in school, and perhaps even lost income due to the reduction in available work hours. The participation in educational activities place an additional burden on the already tight budget of those who are non-participants. Food, shelter, clothing, and medical expenses, to name a few, take priority over the family purse strings, thereby leaving education out of the picture. Transportation may be a situational factor if the place of education is far from home and/or work, which in turn negatively impacts time and money. Transportation from one location to another takes time and costs money and the further away the location the more time and money is spent. This factor exacerbates the previous two situational factors mentioned, those of time and money. Other factors to participation are dispositional. The dispositional barriers include selfesteem, personality, and perceived cost vs. benefit. Those with lower self-esteem require more encouragement from family, friends, and coworkers, and if they do not get that encouragement they are unlikely to participate in adult learning opportunities. Back to the profile of the typical non-participant, support and encouragement to participate in education is not as common for those in lower income families, again due to focus on meeting the lower level physiological and safety needs.

The personality of the learner comes into play as well. Some adults love the learning, the challenge, and the interaction with others who are like-minded. For them, learning is a fulfilling undertaking. Many non-participants, on the other hand, remember past bad experiences in the classroom and do not want to risk repeating those experiences by engaging in adult education. Another factor that comes into play is the adults perception of the cost vs. benefit of the education. What will be the cost in time, money, and sacrifices? What will be the rewards for

WHY NON-PARTICIPANTS DO NOT PARTICIPATE pursuing the education? Will it be worth it? While these questions must be answered based on individual circumstances, non-participants are less likely to see the benefits of education outweighing the costs. Their personal experience is less likely to include the success stories showing the benefits of education, and they spend more time in survival mode than do their more affluent counterparts. Getting an education and improving their station in life is something that they see as happening to other people, not themselves. Another factor I personally saw as a barrier to participating in adult education was for those who lived in rural areas, specifically farming and ranching communities. We moved from a very small town in west Texas right before high school, but I kept in touch with several of my junior high friends. This little community had the tradition of holding an 8th grade graduation

ceremony. It was a holdover from the days when many of the students did not finish high school because they were needed to help on their parents farms. While all my junior high friends graduated from high school, many of them did not go on to college. They married and stayed home to help run or take over the family farms. I remember wondering if that would have been my lot had we not moved from the area before I started high school. Since we had no family farm and both of my parents were not only college graduates but had masters degrees, I do not think I would have married my high school sweetheart and stayed home to raise the kids and help run the farm, but I will never know for certain. In summary, why do the non-participants in adult education continue their nonparticipation? I do not believe it is because they have no interest in adult education. I do believe that it is because they have barriers to education that are difficult, perhaps even impossible in their eyes, to overcome. They are a product of their environment and trapped in a paradigm they do not know how to escape. As adult educators, we can help the non-participants break that

WHY NON-PARTICIPANTS DO NOT PARTICIPATE paradigm by informing them about the benefits of education, educating their educators about how to better meet the students needs, and educate others about the impact that classism has on the lower class learners. This in and of itself will not fix the problem as it is much more deep-

seated than a communication and education issue. The educational and social systems need to be studied and data collected to validate the true root cause of the problem before it can ever hope to be truly resolved. But in the meantime, we adult educators can do our part to educate others how to better serve the underserved.

WHY NON-PARTICIPANTS DO NOT PARTICIPATE References Beegle, D. M. (2003, October/November). Overcoming the silence of generational poverty [Article]. Talking Points, 15(1), 11-20. Retrieved from http://www.combarriers.com/pdf/TP0151Overcoming.pdf

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Burton, N. (2102, May 23). Our hierarchy of needs. Why true freedom is a luxury of the mind. . Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201205/ourhierarchy-needs Darche, S., Nayar, N., & Downs, P. (2009). Adult education in California: strategic planning process needs assessment. Retrieved from Outreach and Technical Assistance Network for Adult Educators: http://www.otan.us/strategicplanning/pdf/ae-na-113009.pdf Ginsberg, M. B., & Wlodkowski, R. J. (2010). Access and participation. In C. E. Kasworm, A. D. Rose, & J. M. Ross-Gordon (Eds.), Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education (2010 ed., pp. 25-34). [Kindle version]. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com Kaimakami, E., Panta, M., & Maria, K. (2008). Factors influencing adults participation in education. Retrieved from World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society: http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2008/crete/education/education67.pdf United States Census Bureau [Database record]. (n.d.). http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/download_data.html