Book Review: Creating a Place for Adult Learners in Higher Education: Challenges and Opportunities by Rose,A.,Ross-Gordon,J.,& Kasworm,C.

With a focus on responsiveness, inclusivity, innovation, and equity, Creating a Place for Adult Learners in Higher Education by Amy D. Rose, Jovita M. Ross-Gordon, and Carol E. Kasworm meticulously details the histories, policies, and principles impacting adult learners in postsecondary education. Drawing upon the lived experiences of adult learners, key past and present theories of adult education, and extensive critical evaluations of the existing and imagined initiatives designed to remedy the barriers toward adult learners’ higher education access, the authors paint a holistic picture of the supports necessary for a better future for higher education—one that makes space for all learners.

With backgrounds as professors and administrators in higher education, Rose, Ross-Gordon, and Kasworm understand the intersections between adult and higher education from a personal experience lens; in this volume, they bolster their interest in adult higher education with thorough research on the lived experiences and outcomes of adult students. In Chapter 1, they introduce their overarching question of how to holistically accommodate adult students, with the goal of “encouraging enrollment, persistence, retention, and graduation” (p. 14). In subsequent chapters—Chapter 2 seeking to understand the needs of adult students, Chapter 3 addressing how recruitment and admissions may best meet adult students where they are at, Chapter 4 considering financial supports, Chapters 5 and 6 highlighting more inclusive curricular and pedagogical approaches, Chapters 7 and 8 discussing key wraparound supports for adult students, Chapters 9 and 10 investigating outcomes related to persistence and retention, and the final chapters establishing the path for policy leaders to promote inclusivity and responsiveness in higher education, this book deeply considers how we can better understand and serve adult learners in all their complexities.

Though this volume is written as a meta-analysis of the research surrounding adult learning in higher education, it reads as something much more personal, as the authors’ writing consistently considers adult learners as their “whole person.” They interweave adult students’ life experiences, educational backgrounds, and senses of belonging throughout the book, ensuring that readers are grounded in an empathy for who the higher education changes are meant to serve, and making certain that readers understand the necessity of holistic supports.

Reviewer Alan Mandell of SUNY Empire State University refers to this volume as “encyclopedic in scope,” as it addresses the “multiple domains we must consider” to respond to the needs of adult learners today. This certainly rings true, as Rose, Ross-Gordon, and Kasworm seem to address every facet of supporting adult learners, from the ways in which they have been historically perceived to the specific challenges they face today. The comprehensive nature of this volume suggests that all actors in higher education have a role to play in creating space for adult learners, making this an essential read for anyone interested in inclusion and equity in higher education.

In the book's preface, the authors state their intention to avoid representing adult learners as a monolithic group, recognizing their inability to fully incorporate the literature on “adults of color, LGBTQ adults, and other groups of adults” returning to or entering college (p. x). Despite this disclaimer, the authors incorporate analysis around the diversity of adult learners and their experiences, for example, detailing the impacts of racism and sexism on the educational outcomes of Black women, and considering the ableism experienced by adult students in higher education. Throughout the volume, they also make references to the experiences of veterans, working-class adult students, and adults with young children. Their exploration of the multiple intersectional and identity-based dimensions of learners’ experiences ensures that adult learners are not portrayed as a homogeneous entity, so that a wide range of interventions and supports may be considered. At the same time, the authors establish this book as a “beginning, not an end,” to the dialogue about adult learners in higher education, making an important call for continued conversation around the diverse experiences of adult learners (p. x). This volume is important as part of a working body of literature that seeks just visions of education for adult learners; at the same time, its all-inclusive and holistic nature makes it an important standalone read.

For anyone with interest in or connections to the fields of adult and higher education, this book is a critical resource, with implications for administrators, educators, faculty, community organizations, and learners themselves. Moreover, these implications are interconnected—Rose, Ross-Gordon, and Kasworm state that their research on educational conditions for adult learners may serve to better educational experiences for all. Their vision of higher education equity requires “deeper, more fundamental changes that have implications for the provision of higher education itself” (p. 234). It is through diligent research-advocacy efforts like this one that fundamental changes may come to be.