The proliferation of uses of "certificate" in education and business is rendering the term meaningless. Higher education institutions should seek consensus on the types and categories in order to maintain clarity. A delineation between nonbaccalaureate and postbaccalaureate and between credit and noncredit is a starting point. (Contains…

Eight colleges participate in an educational program for suburban women which provides college level credit and noncredit courses. (SE)

Case study of two community centers through observation, interviews, and questionnaires used Candy's domains of self-directed learning (SDL). Results revealed the potential of community learning, raised questions about the domains and the nature of SDL, challenged the humanist perspective of the autonomous unified self, and suggested the…

Colleges and universities have failed to meet the long-recognized, growing need for nonacademic-credit gerontology education. With the explosive growth of the aging network, other organizations have readily responded to the fast-growing market. Results of two needs assessments over a 5-year period demonstrate employers' higher support for…

Between 2004 and 2008, the Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy (CAAL) published four lengthy research reports on projects to examine the nature and effectiveness of Adult Education English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) programs at several community colleges. The research was conducted by field studies, interviews, and the review of a large…

In New Zealand there are four university-based centres for continuing education which provide non-credit short courses. This paper presents data from a survey which was conducted with the intention of building understanding of the cohort of learners who attend short non-credit courses, to better understand their views and values and to determine…

This paper considers noncredit instruction in the California Community College System. It identifies three related concepts: a state need for increased levels of education that noncredit instruction is well placed to supply, several changes that begin to facilitate that response, and additional changes that are needed to ensure success. The…

This report presents data from a biannual survey of non-credit instructional activities at constituent institutions of the State University of New York (SUNY) in 1991. Non-credit instruction provides educational support mostly to adults who may be considering a career change or career advancement and also provides job skills training in…

Not only are goal expectations assessed in this study, but also the extent to which goals are realized. Profiles are developed of the noncredit course enrollees on the different campuses of the university. (KR)

Findings from a survey of seven participant groups representing 1,335 Kansas noncredit adult learners tested a typology of noncredit adult learning benefits. Overall, important benefits included (1) being better informed, (2) updating job knowledge, (3) self-improvement, (4) preparing for added job responsibilities, and (5) improving learning…

This study inventoried state policies and regulations on and financial support for noncredit occupational programming offered by community colleges. Information collected from state- and community college-level administrators and Web-based searches is organized by a range of issues related to noncredit occupational programming and funding, such as…

Adults who immigrate to the United States recognize the value of fluency in the dominant language as a bridge to social mobility in their new homeland. In California, many of them invest time and energy in noncredit English as a Second Language (ESL) programs offered within the community college system to gain communicative competence and enhance…

Conditions prevailing in the world of work, and the corresponding behavior of adults to seek further education as a means of adjusting to these conditions, has provided the climate for the emergence of the Continuing Education Unit (CEU). Adults today need a kind of accreditation that recognizes both their continuing pursuit of competence and…

This report is a compilation of data on department enrollments by campus, total enrollment by campus, and enrollment by campus and school in fall terms 1994-1998 for City College of San Francisco. On Castro-Valencia campus, enrollment rate for credit courses in music increased from 18 in fall 1994 to 59 in fall 1998, an increase of 227.8%. On John…

Describes the complete program of extension education offered by the American University in Cairo. (AN)