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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_high_school

In Denmark and some neighboring countries there's this concept of a school you can go to just to learn stuff later in life, as an ongoing thing. There's a whole bunch of themes (sports, history, etc), and often you can book yourself in for whatever amount of time makes sense for you.

Do you get an academic degree?

Generally no

Is that recognized socially ? As in opening a business after passes these classes.

You don't need a degree to open a business. And mostly it's for learning things for your own satisfaction, which I sense is what you mean?

Depends. If it's in a medical field, you might need a degree.

You don't need a degree to open a medical business. You need a degree to practice medicine.

This certainly depends on local rules. For example, in the UK I believe dental businesses can only be opened by a qualified dentist. I was surprised when I learnt this earlier this year.

This source [0] says “non-dentists cannot set up or buy dental practices as an individual or partnership but they are permitted to be shareholders of a limited company which owns the practice” and “the majority of directors of that limited company cannot be non-dentists”.

[0]: https://www.plutopartners.co.uk/post/who-can-own-a-dental-bu...

I believe this is the case with law firms, and probably some other professional firms, in the US as well. AFAIK a law firm is a partnership of lawyers.

That said, this isn't what most people are talking about when they are talking about starting a business.

Depends on the trade, you can't make electrical work without some form of recognition I believe. And beyond that I mostly asked regarding customers, you want something to back your claims and prices.

Those are called “trade schools” in the US, and most community colleges have programs for trades. For example, a lot of community colleges have programs in auto repair and heating/cooling.

It gets more complicated in the US because of unions. In many places, you can’t become a plumber or electrician without an apprenticeship, which is controlled by the trade unions. Therefore, community colleges might offer classes on plumbing or electrical, but there’s no equivalent to a certification program, because it’s not possible to become a professional just by going to school.

Interesting I never linked the name 'trade school' with adult learning. I thought it was some parallel track for teenagers to jump into a field.

My impression, knowing very few who has attended højskole, is that people do it for their own personal fulfillment and enjoyment.

Socially, I’d say that it is respected and regarded as a sign of dedication to ones interests.

which is pretty cool, I think it's a vital need for humans to keep learning new stuff if you don't have enough stimulation

> As in opening a business after passes these classes.

Where do you need a degree to open a business?

Lots of professions and trades require a qualification or license to practice.

So getting these qualifications are required for reskilling.

Right so the employees providing the actual services may need qualifications. The person opening the business doesn't. I've never seen anywhere where opening a business needs a degree or qualification.

Yes, because tons of people have the capital to open business and hire employees.

Reality is most people wanting to retrain are going to do it as a single person business as a plumber, hair dresser or similar.

Going and getting a degree isn't a good way of raising capital.

I never said it was. It's potentially good way of getting a well paid job though.

Dentist, vet clinic, lawyer are three.

Daycare center, hairstyling and financial advisor are others that require qualifications / lic

> Dentist, vet clinic, lawyer are three.

People aren't learning these professions at folk high school are they?

That's the point. Most people want adult education so they have comfortable lives. Learning about history is a luxury pursuit really for people who are already comfortable and have spare time.

So you really need education that leads to recognised qualifications.

We have community colleges in America that serve the exact same function. My parents love taking the astronomy courses because they come with an observatory. They have also some some criminal justice classes and a lot of art classes like pottery. They are very old. You also don’t get a degree for taking these courses but they are much cheaper than the classes are for degree track students.

I have a bachelors in computer engineering but I've taken drawing and painting classes at my local community college. It was a fun and we met once a week at night for 3 months. I think it was $120 for the entire 3 months but we did have to buy our own supplies.

I have a programmer friend that took welding and car repair classes at the community college. He just wanted to learn.

Many if not most universities in the USA have extension schools that serve this purpose.

I'd like to point out that Extension schools also allow minors to take full credit college courses. I basically had my math bachelor's degree complete by the time I was officially accepted to my university.

If you are a parent, let your children know about these extension college courses if they are interested!

ROTFL. This is called "Volkshochschule" in Germany. Hochschule can be translated to University. One guy from former Yugoslavia took an accounting course there, got a certificate and had this translated (to Serbian, Croatian or whatever). The translater did indeed translate Volkshochschule to Peoples University and the guy managed to secure a Professor position with it at a University. Of cause later this caused a scandal...

Strange, they must have also "translated" the certificate to a PhD in that case :)

In Germany the PhD isn’t necessary to become a Professor. Not sure about the other country though.

> In Denmark and some neighboring countries there's this concept of a school you can go to just to learn stuff later in life, as an ongoing thing

We have those in the US; we don't have a general collective name for them, but there are both private for-profit ones with a variety of (mostly narrow) specialities, either standalone or as adjuncts to other related businesses (selling, e.g., products in the field that it teaches people to act in), plus community colleges, public libraries, public parks and rec departments, and museums tend to also have programs that serve this function, despite it not being their sole or primary function.

My whole life, I've heard of those places as either "FunEd" or "The Learning Annex" and I didn't realize until well into adulthood that those were proper nouns, not the generic name for "classes you take as a grownup just for interest."

I wish schools got audited for that very thing. Schools are extremely discriminatory against adults not at application time, but when they offer classes. Not only do they not accommodate either, a lot of professors still pull BS where you need to hand in assignments at the end of class! There is absolutely nothing in the education system today that requires you to hand in something with such a short term time table.

I say this as a mid 20s return college student. My experience going back to college without the "stars in my eyes" so to speak, has really left me embittered by the system altogether. Schools act like autocratic bureaucracies that when they make a mistake all you get is an "oops sorry. Now deal with it lol." Also student employment is not only predatory (cause the pay is just garbage), but it's like they don't even train students either. If you want any answers, you have to wait to talk to one of the few people who has actually been hired on as an employee.

Higher education is structured for students going from high school to their institutions. They also assume students don't have full time employment or a family. So basically if you have either of those, the school doesn't care at all about your plight. They know your gonna pay off your loans and complete your degree. They prefer younger impressionable kids who are gonna waste a lot of time and money there instead.

There are schools that are much more oriented (or have programs that are much more oriented) towards people who are working or are otherwise not attending school full time. I'm not sure I can really fault the average undergrad program for orienting things towards the 95% case situation. (Some schools are also much more commuter-oriented than others are.)

You are absolutely right and that definitely makes sense. But, and I have to preface this has been my experience, there are virtually no accommodations. School is your job when you go back to a university and colleges believe that is what you should be doing.

Now to the legalities. The Age Discrimination Act mandates any institution receiving federal funding from preventing someone from being able to participate[0]. So like a physical disability, if you only make stairs because "99% of people can walk" but cannot accommodate for someone in a wheelchair, you would be in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Same thing with making a website accessible to the blind. By making your courses only available during business hours, you essentially are telling working adults "we are preventing you from participating in mandatory courses because you cannot be at work during the class." Work, mind you, that will pay their bills, support their family, and keep them out of absurd debt bondage upon graduation.

When you make class at 8AM for 1.5 hours, Monday-Wednesday-Friday, you are discriminating against working adults. It doesn't matter if the discrimination is intentional. Your very allowance of not offering a course wholly online without a mandatory attended lecture or just a night class is pure evidence that you do not want non-traditional students. How can an college believe that someone who works full time can make that work? Night classes are at least an accommodation and can work.

What I've found is technical colleges, since they're catered toward people going back to school, they do a much better job all around. Also since they are city funded and not a state run university through tax payers, they can hire real employees. So when I ask an administrative question that is very important, I don't get "uh I'm not sure, let me ask a staff member since I'm only a student employee! Can you hold for 10 minutes?"

https://www2.ed.gov/policy/rights/guid/ocr/ageoverview.html

It may be discrimination towards people with jobs, but it's not based on age. Legally, employees are not a protected class. Also, the protected class for age is "people over 40", who are not necessarily more likely to work full time than people under 40.

If you intentionally create an environment that is hostile toward people of differing ages, you are discriminating. My college required me upon sign up to put in for my housing "My parent/guardians contact information." Universally everyone is an adult when they enter college (the people who don't are so rare I'm ignoring them). I could not leave the page unless I entered any data so I just put my name and contact info. Guess what else? All the events are catered toward young students and target them specifically that way. If someone really wanted to, they could easily have an age discrimination case against almost every school. Culturally however, people don't because they don't want to associate with lesser experienced and more incredibly arrogant individuals.

>Higher education is structured for students going from high school to their institutions. They also assume students don't have full time employment or a family. So basically if you have either of

In the US, Depending on your state this might not be true. Many of the 'Elite' schools are absolutely as you describe, but many of the state schools do cater to adult learners. This is particularly true in states which separate their Research Universities from their more teaching oriented Universities. Most of the latter do have night classes and other offerings aimed at adult learners. But the private universities with dreams of grandeur are looking mostly for the "traditional college student"

Very interesting to know there was a term for that already.

Slight anecdote, I gave a few geometry lessons to a teen. And witnessing his brain operate was quite staggering. Teen operate at high frequency low depth it seems. He didn't want to grasp the rule or symmetry but ran in many intuitions very rapidly (honestly my brain froze at his pace of change, so vibrant) only to feel defeated or confused. Made me think adult and kids really need different approaches. Our emotions facing a new topic are so different.

Love this story because this has been my experience as well when teaching youth. Children in a classroom scarcely need a teacher explaining things to them. Give them the materials and leave the room for an hour. I guarantee you they'll know what to do and how to to do it when you return. However, they won't have any particular depth of knowledge of the topic. And thats because they usually move onto their own ideas of how to use the new knowledge. They're not interested in how I use that knowledge. So different approaches for youth vs adults has always been something I needed to train either. One approach doesn't really work for the other.

As an adult with ADHD, these descriptions sound very similar to how I study and learn too, and perhaps explain the difficulties I've had.

> Most masters classes are simply just repackaged versions of undergraduate classes, maybe with a little more depth.

Depends on the country. Masters degrees can be research which are the first year of a Ph.D. or they can be taught degrees. In the latter they are usually called "conversion" courses where there's intensive focus on filling in gaps in education for somebody moving to the field. E.g. moving from an Economics B.Sc. to a Computer Science degree.

Where I was educated the Computing Science undergraduate degree is the equivalent of any Masters degree in the same subject. There is nothing in the subject matter that would be of value as another degree as it isn't advancement. It would be merely repackaged undergraduate courses like you suggest.

> In the latter they are usually called "conversion" courses where there's intensive focus on filling in gaps in education for somebody moving to the field.

Well, or they are first professional degrees (e.g., the MBA, MFA, etc.)

In the US, those gaps are usually noted and you fill them with upper division courses and if necessary, lower division. Actual graduate courses are quite different from undergraduate even covering the same subject matter.

  Lower division is problem sets.
  Upper division is problem sets + project.
  Graduate is project + research paper.

I understand GP's point, education can vary widely depending on the country.

For example, in my home country an undergraduate degree in engineering is normally 5 years where

- first 2 years are very standard undergraduate courses (your lower division)

- last 3rd and 4th years are the upper division you describe

- 5th year is a graduation project that can be 50 to 100 pages long (almost a thesis) + upper division courses and maybe a research paper (depends if you had a scholarship of sorts)

So when a person goes to do a master in this country, the experience is almost one of a PhD, while the PhD experience is very intense.

I did a hybrid masters in CS - half the year was taught and half the year was research. Of the 6 classes I was taught 2 of them were undergrad level (and they were 3rd/final year level at that), and the rest were definitely a level above undergrad. Most were actively learning about the state of the art in their areas, or very close to it. Of the 15 or so students, 5 of us had our names on papers from the research we did for the second period. My experience may be atypical, but I definitely believe there is a range available, and it's unfortunately up to a student to try to discern the two.

And ones that are solely or mostly classroom courses can even be taken by people who majored in the field undergrad. I know someone who did one years ago at a top school. Which surprised me a bit at the time because, although I did have classes in my Master's program, the real value was in my thesis, some additional related research, and an unrelated project.

I guess I don't really see it.

As an adult, I don't really have much interest in a complete degree with a certification. (With the exception of very bounded industry-specific things.) So in that respect adult education certainly is different.

I have known people who got PhDs as adults and I think they mostly didn't care for the experience. I know I have zero interest in getting another degree. Even a couple of decades ago, it would have zero value for my professional development and would, in fact, have been mostly a distraction.

However, there are a ton of educational opportunities often oriented to working adults. Community colleges, extension programs, online learning of all sorts...

Most of the people I know with PhD's did them because they wsnted to do a PhD, not because it would increase their earning potential.

Where I went (MIT Media Lab) our classes were unique and only graduate level. In fact masters and PhD took the same classes, PhD just took more of them. There were no undergrads, and the knowledge assumptions, type of classes, and speed were very much more advanced than undergraduate. During my undergraduate (UCSD) I took a few masters classes — they were definitely harder and assumed a lot more knowledge with less hand holding. YMMV.

I'm a life long learner myself. I have to agree that the traditional education system is lacking and is very poorly set up at catering for people like us. If you want to take classes as a working adult, you're pretty much limited to night school. Which, for reasons I will never understand, seems to be mostly limited to languages (and oddly specific things like TIG welding). Although some universities seem to be offering philosophy courses on an evening schedule as well.

I get that you need a big enough audience in order to set up any class, and supply/demand is definitely an issue. But I think the demand is much higher than what the supply side seems to cater for.

Things like Khan Academy are great, but they've begun to scale down their offering in favour of university prep. The Open University has some truly great content, but it's prohibitively expensive. MOOCs seem very hit or miss, and often lack a good mechanism for feedback. And quite frankly, I enjoy being in a classroom full of motivated people.

People in the US place extremely high values on education. What is lacking is people's ability to pay for it.

Having lived in a fairly rural area of the US, and having parents who live in a different, very rural area of the US, that the rural areas do not have much of a value for education. Particularly the type of Christians who are the 6-day creation types, although I also haven't found as many 6-day creation believers in urban areas.

(This isn't meant as a dig at those, just an observation. If your worldview places "belief in the Bible" as a high value and your interpretation requires a literal reading, then what would an institution full of people who preach evolution and old-earth have to offer? I have a friend who teaches physics part-time at a local college in one of these rural areas, but he is 6-day creation. I said that you'd have to believe that the scientists are incompetent at their jobs, and he said that of course they were. I was stunned because while I could imagine other people saying that, I didn't imagine that he would. I can't fathom how you can believe that people who have worked years to figure out how to most accurately date something would be so incompetent as to mistake days for thousands or millions of years. Especially when it's physics that underlies all the carbon dating... And to be fair, there are plenty of Christians who think 6-day creation is a rather silly abuse of a poetic account.)

I have lived in a very rural part of the US as well. Typically there's a rundown part of a small town (or for very small towns, the entire town) that has people caught in it that may not appreciate education, but generally my experience is everyone does recognize the value of education but may resent the fact they have no access to it. They are also not usually overly religious.

Farmers especially respect education a great deal because the states pay professionals to go out and tell them how to make as much money as possible.

Is there also Gynagogy?

There isn't.

'Andragogy' is not a great name for a theory which tries to describe how all adults, not just men, learn. However, it is a really telling name about the kinds of assumptions baked into the theory [1].

I work in adult education; I don't use the word 'andragogy' to describe what I do, and it's a bit of a warning sign if someone else does.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0260691793...