ABSTRACT
Since the 1980s, thinking about higher education policy and practice in the United States has been heavily influenced, if not dominated, by ideas about the ability of higher education to continue to meet the changing and the developing needs of the nation effectively. The passing of the industrial age and advent of the information era have created new forms and modes of knowledge and information production, presentation, and distribution that directly affect our traditional system of higher education. The passage of the GI Bill or the Servicemen's Readjustment Act in 1944 was a major political shift providing a massive influx of veterans into higher education (Millard 1991). Adult students have not only continued to flow into post-secondary institutions but their numbers have increased significantly. Quinnan (1997) contends that within a period of twenty years, from 1971 to 1991, the enrolment of students aged twenty-five or older increased by 171 percent. Within the same period, the enrolment of students aged twenty-five to twenty-nine increased by 99 percent, of those thirty to thirty-four by 201 percent and of those above thirty-five years by 48 percent.
