Adult education and some andragogical dimensions of higher education in the Republic of Moldova

The "meeting" between the institutions of higher education and adult education produced not only on the non-formal educational platform, but also on that of the formal education constitutes a defiant challenge of entrenched models and traditional approaches and also an opportunity to increase the number of candidates to higher education in the situation of, loss", out of various reasons, of traditional students. Thus, on the one hand, the adult education and andragogy as a didactic paradigm of adult education and, on the other hand, university education acquire connections determined by widening the heterogeneousness of the actors involved in the educational process in terms of age, educational pathways, professional experience, learning needs and motivations, life experince, and skills. The article provides an analysis of policies and practices in the Republic of Moldova in the sphere of continuous education at universities, of andragogidal dimensions of university education and it emphasizes on the formal education opportunities provided by universities to mature students. The article cited 5 sources of conceptual, policy and methodological nature of adult education researchers and many other electronic sources that show statistics and practices from the domain. As the result of analyses, we conclude that adult education at universities and andragogical particularities of higher education derive from the judgements of organizational character of the educational system, as well as of psycho-social, demographic, economic, and psychopedagogical nature. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd.