Trapped in a Local History: Why Did Extramural Fail to Engage in the Era of Engagement?

Abstract

Extramural liberal adult education (LAE), as conceived in the particular UK tradition, was doomed by its high-minded origins and its privileged status, and contributed little to the new concepts of éducation permanente, lifelong learning, the knowledge society, the learning society and region, or to the new understandings of university engagement and regional development becoming prominent with the new millennium. The recent introduction of equivalent or lower qualifications (ELQs) is likely to bring about the complete demise of the tradition. Meanwhile ‘the university’ grows and changes in diverse and important ways and directions little informed by the commendable and abiding purposes for which extramural LAE was founded, although this might benefit from the socially informed liberal perspectives of and the facilitation skills honed in extra-mural departments (EMDs). University engagement in regional development has become unbalanced towards the (neo) liberal economic and the technical/skills agenda. Universities as well as regions are the poorer as a result. As the world experiences new forms and intensities of economic, environmental, geopolitical and cultural crisis, rebalancing in favour of a wider civic mission becomes the more urgent.