Leisure Time in Our Community - Adult Education: Are Men And Women Equal?

Do men and women attend adult education classes just to meet each other, to socialize, to achieve personal goals? No. The predominant object, both in 1991 and in 1999, for both sexes, was advancement on the job, if more so for men than for women. But the trend toward education to achieve personal goals is certainly there. This motivation increased among men and reached to a level nearly equal to that for women eight years earlier in 1999, and, among the ladies, advancement on the job and personal goals had the same rank for seeking adult education in 1999.

Large numbers of adults are engaged in this form of education. In 1991, 32% of both adult males and females — 25.9 million men and 31.5 million women — were going to classes. By 1999, a smaller proportion of men (43%) and a larger of women (48%) were pressing school benches — 40.2 and 48.6 million respectively.

If "training for a job" is lumped in with "advancement on the job," then the overwhelming motivation for adult education is job related, in both periods, for men as well as women, and with increases in absolute numbers as well in percentages taken into account, the trends is that we are — ambitious. Again, the men slightly more so than the women. But, in the red-hot economy of the late 1990s, slightly less so than earlier.

Completing a degree or obtaining a diploma ranked third among both sexes in 1991, third among men only in 1999. But this category, in any case, hovers just at or above the 10% mark throughout this period.

In the next panel we try to factor in the educational attainment of those taking adult education? How many are engaged in education as a quest that should never end?

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1994 and 2001.