Adult Education and Training
In contrast to the general consensus about educating the young, there are a range of beliefs about who should pay for education and training of those who are beyond what is considered "school age." These programs include what is variously called adult education, continuing education, adult retraining, and adult upgrading. The number of people served by these programs is significant; according to Statistics Canada's Adult Education and Training Survey (AETS), about 35% of the Canadian adult population took courses or received training in 1993.²

To some extent, the balance of costs between society and the individual learner depends on how education is regarded: as a personal and economic benefit to the individual, as the right of every citizen, or as a common good for society as a whole. Many post secondary institutions have a longstanding tradition that costs of continuing education are shared between the provider and the learner on the grounds that it is part of the institution's mission to serve the population whose taxes support it. But this has changed dramatically over the past ten years, with increasing demands that continuing education programs not only recover direct costs but return a profit to the institution. Some continuing educators feel the move towards profit making is a betrayal of public educational institutions' social responsibility; others feel it is a realistic response to a changed funding climate.³

To increase revenues, post secondary institutions are increasingly seeking "partnerships" with the private sector in a variety of arrangements ranging from those in which the institution provides programs customized to meet the training needs of a particular company or industry to those in which the institution obtains special rates for a corporation's product or service, such as computer software or long distance telephone access.

There has also been a mix of approaches to funding in the field of retraining and adult upgrading. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was an increase in government funded programs as part of the rapid expansion of publicly supported community development initiatives. Since then, funding patterns have changed according to the political tenets of the day.

In place of "block funding," which enabled providers to allocate funds according to local priorities, funding has been more and more directed into particular types of programs. In some years, funding priorities seemed to stress basic literacy and numeracy; in others, it was training in advanced technology to meet the anticipated demands of an economic system based on "knowledge workers."

In some sectors, employers have covered or shared with employees the cost of job-related training, but employer groups have also argued that public education should provide graduates with the skills they need for the workplace.⁴