Giving Compass' Take:
- Mallika Seshadri sheds light on the important role that accessible adult education plays in economic mobility.
- How can donors help ensure that adult education is accessible remotely and provides affordable child care to students?
- Learn more about key issues in education and how you can help.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on education in your area.
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Despite efforts across various sectors, adults throughout California continue to struggle to access education opportunities that can be critical for their family’s economic mobility.
The panel at EdSource’s roundtable, “Adult education: Overlooked and underfunded,” discussed how adults and their families can benefit from adult education, the common barriers to access and ways to overcome them.
“During the pandemic, our emergency room took in some of our most at-need people and triaged them to the right medical care that they need,” said John Werner, the executive director of Sequoias Adult Education Consortium at Thursday’s discussion. “Adult schools do very similar work with education.”
Barriers to Adult Education
Panelist Francisco Solano grew up in Mexico, where he earned a high school education but had no interest in continuing his schooling. About 16 years ago, he came to the United States and found himself working for salad-packing companies.
He eventually enrolled in adult education classes at Salinas Adult School and is now wrapping up a doctorate in molecular biology at UCLA.
But the road through his adult education was “exhausting” and “not convenient at all.”
“That’s what I see with my peers,” Solano said. “They are not able to get out of that lifestyle because it’s so difficult for them to be able to have a job that secures rent and food for the families and, at the same time, find time and resources to go to school or try something else.”
Solano also believes that larger companies do not want migrants like him to succeed because that would take away a source of cheap labor.
Rural areas — where barriers associated with time and distance are greater — have a high need for adult education.
Steve Curiel, the principal of Huntington Beach Adult School, said not enough conversations about adult education are held at the policy level because most people in elected positions are unlikely to understand the critical role it plays, having experienced more traditional educational journeys.
Read the full article about adult education access by Mallika Seshadri at EdSource.