Abstract
For quite some time in the past, higher education has been seen as a boundless world, a kind of womb that gives birth to attractive intellectual possibilities. The Humboldtian vision of the University, as an agent of Bildung, is perhaps the best expression of an educational institution responsible for endowing modern individuals with a certain awareness of themselves and the world. Today, as education is defined by its embrace of change, hyperactivity, and acceleration (Allen & Goddard, Education and Philosophy. Sage, 2017), a peculiar dialectic between higher education and the prevalent lifelong learning has been developed: On the one side, higher education programs emerge as the necessary scientific and research background for the promotion of lifelong learning goals while, on the other side, lifelong learning is alleged to play a catalytic role for the constant re-organization of university studies curricula. In an age typical of the results of this dialectic, what Gert Biesta (Teacher education for educational wisdom. In W. Hare & J. P. Portelli (Eds.), Philosophy of education: Introductory readings (pp. 432–449). Brush Education Inc., 2013) plausibly has styled as the “learnification of education,” educating the socially vulnerable adults marks an area with ever-increasing educational, social, and institutional significance.
In this chapter of utmost importance for us is, firstly, to deliberate on the fortunes and misfortunes of the education for the socially vulnerable in modern higher education. What room is left, if any, that higher education grants those who are underprivileged and, perhaps, excluded (or alienated) by the most significant objective dimensions of the modern world? What is the role of higher education in regard to the education for the socially vulnerable? Should the goals of higher education be inspired by the broader educational philosophy of educational inclusion and social cohesion? Secondly, to reach certain conclusions regarding:
(a) the nature and the content of lifelong learning programs in the context of higher education, (b) the best possible balance between research, policy, and pedagogical imperatives, and (c) the education of the educators and the rights and benefits of the socially vulnerable groups.
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Karavakou, V. (2022). Educating the Socially Vulnerable in the Lifelong Learning Era: Reflections on the Role of Higher Education. In: Anagnostopoulou, D., Skiadas, D. (eds) Higher Education and Research in the European Union. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85690-8_9
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