Adult Learning, Tertiary Education Policy in New Zealand and the Future

Abstract

This article traces ideas about adult learning from Unesco’s Hamburg Declaration (1997) to the Labour government’s Tertiary Education Strategy (2002) and speculates how these ideas might fare over the next five years in a policy context dominated by “third way” politics. It is divided into three sections. In the first, the Hamburg Declaration’s Agenda for the Future is discussed in the broader framework of thinking about adult learning. In the second, the themes from the Agenda for the Future are used to analyse the emerging strategies for tertiary education in New Zealand. In the final section it is suggested that the “third way” future envisioned by the Strategy is beset with economic, social and cultural tensions.