Presiding: SHERRY MILLER BROWN, University of Pittsburgh
Presenter: SUZANNE SPREADBURY, Harvard Extension School.

    When it comes to working adults and their educational experiences, most research in the United States focuses on how education improves job skills and makes adult students more desirable to employers. Most researchers conclude that adult students, in general, and working-class students, in particular, are more interested in job training than liberal arts learning. The purpose of this study is to examine what motivates 18 adult students in an open-enrollment liberal arts degree program at Harvard Extension School. All of these students grew up in working-class families and many are living working-class lives as adults. This qualitative, narrative study reveals that institutional adult education is often more about intellectual curiosity and validating one’s intellectual identity than about job training.