Unplanned benefit. On the functional transition of continuing education and retraining

The results of a longitudinal study of the intended and unintended effects of continuing education and retraining indicate that their function in a societal context as well as their significance for individuals' live is in a process of change. As opposed to commonly held disparaging views of this form of education, which are also disseminated in professional literature, it is shown that a wide array of benefits for the participants of continuing education and retraining could be drawn, although these usually differed from the intended consequences. While the AFG-promoted continuing education and retraining barely fulfils the purposes for which they were designed (the reintegration of participants into active labour), they have taken on functions that give education a new meaning. The more education is loosing its instrumental character, the more it becomes necessarily once again self-referential.