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Although it is a highly developed industrial country and generally known as technologically savvy, Germany lags internationally in digital transformation. Moreover, Germany's progress in Higher Education (HE) is uneven since 16 federal states have responsibility for education, including Higher Education. The pandemic has reinforced the importance as much as accelerated the transition to digitalization in HE. Although HE leaders see digitalization as important for research, service, and management, they emphasize that digital transformation has meaning for teaching and learning. The new digitally-based formats of teaching and learning--for example "blended learning" and so-called "inverted classroom" formats--benefit students most as they motivate and engage them more than does traditional classroom-based education. As Germany is a member of the European Union (EU) and a signatory of the Bologna Process, European policies, programs, guidelines, and agreements also affect Germany's digital transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue reviews and compares the processes of digitalization of higher education. The articles in this Special Issue, covering 14 countries or regions from five continents, show the many commonalities and challenges of the transformation to a digital state and society, but also significant differences between them, especially between the countries of the 'global North' and the 'global South.' However, these differences stem mostly from governmental policy decisions regarding higher education, more so than technological dimensions of digitalization or the stages of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors show ways in which Jarl Bengtsson, a Swedish social scientist and policy analyst, has influenced international policy making. As a member and later director of the OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation from the beginning of the 1970s to the end of the twentieth century, he has contributed to the international discussion as well as on concrete policy initiatives for lifelong learning as a comprehensive concept for education and other forms of learning outside the formal education system. He was convinced that only such a wider concept would provide equal opportunity to many groups disadvantaged under the present education system, especially adults, indigenous groups, people residing in remote areas, learners from low socio-economic backgrounds and people with disabilities. Since 'lifelong learning' does not start after school, the foundations being built well before, he was also emphasising that learning during one's lifetime was dependent on other enabling and motivational factors such as brain development and early childhood education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter looks into the changing contexts and definitions of clienteles of lifelong learners over the last quarter of a century. The author has been involved in three closely related studies on who lifelong learners are, how they access and participate in higher education (HE), and how and what are they learning in HE and summarises some of the developments and issues over the 25 years that these studies cover (approximately 1987 to 2012). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including lifelong learning and higher education (HE), the role of universities in enhancing human capability, and social contracts between universities and society.

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To answer the question ‘Financing what?’ this article distinguishes several models of lifelong learning as well as a variety of lifelong learning activities. Several financing methods are briefly reviewed, however the principal focus is on Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs) which were seen by some analysts as a promising model for financing learning for adults and an instrument for shifting initiative, choice and responsibility for learning to the learners themselves, for generating a market for providers of education and training, as well as making individuals and their employers share the costs of these activities. Before the backdrop of the decision by Sweden and Canada to abandon their plans to introduce such ILAs prior to their actual launch and the negative experience of the UK where ILAs were implemented on a large scale but later rescinded, the article tries to analyse the problems that ILAs experienced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International organisations were the main proponents of Lifelong Learning when the concept was first developed in the early 1970s. Although different organisations used different labels—Lifelong Learning, recurrent education, éducation permanente—they all emphasised that learning is a lifelong process and that all education should be organised around that principle. In the 1990s the idea re‐emerged, again conceptualised and propagated by international organisations, this time however with a strong human capital rationale. Unlike the first generation notion this new concept was espoused both by governments of the Western industrialised countries and industry. The author critically discusses the role of international organisations in the conceptualisation and implementation of Lifelong Learning. He argues that international organisations do not operate on their own but that their debates and agendas are influenced by national governments who use them for pushing and legitimatising their own political agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the concept and meanings of Lifelong Learning(LLL) and examines the main contributory currents in their development. The articles in this special issue expand and deepen the international and comparative debates by viewing LLL in its wider social, civic, economic, and political dimensions. From different disciplinary perspectives, the article analyzes the various models and meanings of LLL in view of its importance to be included in policy agenda.

International organisations were the main proponents of Lifelong Learning when the concept was first developed in the early 1970s. Although different organisations used different labels—Lifelong Learning, recurrent education, éducation permanente—they all emphasised that learning is a lifelong process and that all education should be organised around that principle. In the 1990s the idea re‐emerged, again conceptualised and propagated by international organisations, this time however with a strong human capital rationale. Unlike the first generation notion this new concept was espoused both by governments of the Western industrialised countries and industry. The author critically discusses the role of international organisations in the conceptualisation and implementation of Lifelong Learning. He argues that international organisations do not operate on their own but that their debates and agendas are influenced by national governments who use them for pushing and legitimatising their own political agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dramatic growth in student numbers associated with the shift from elite to mass systems across virtually all developed countries is central to current transformations in terms of structure, purpose, social and economic role of higher education. As a part of this process of expansion and heterogenization, new groups of students who, for a complex range of social, economic and cultural reasons were traditionally excluded from or under-represented in higher education, might be expected to participate in increasing numbers. The paper develops the concept of non-traditional learners and demonstrates how an examination of ways in which higher education systems respond to such learners can provide a fruitful basis for a comparative analysis of change in higher education across ten countries – Austria, Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. The primary emphasis in the study was on the institutional and policy issues which appeared to either inhibit or support participation by non-traditional learners. On this basis six factors were identified which seemed to be particularly influential with regard to the participation of non-traditional students and the associated moves towards a lifelong learning mode of higher education. The evidence suggests that, while progress can be reported on a number of dimensions in comparison with a similar analysis of participation by adults students in the same countries undertaken just over a decade earlier, high participation rates do not automatically imply that the functions of higher education in social selection and reproduction are obsolete, or that issues of access and equity can be regarded as features of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]