Reconsidering Open and Distance Higher Education: A Life-History Analysis of Adult Learners in Korea National Open University

Adults who enter or re-enter Korea National Open University (KNOU) with a prior major break in their formal involvement in learning tend to seek a focused course of academic study, advanced knowledge, and the subsequent awarding of a degree, certificate, or credential that reflects their specialized knowledge and expertise. This research draws upon life-history analysis to investigate KNOU students’ pre-institutional experiences of exclusion and alienation in education and society in relation to their current motivations to attend the open and distance higher education. The participants’ life stories illuminate how Korean social and cultural barriers prevented them from educational progress, as well as what motivated them to attend KNOU as adults. Each participant’s life history describes the actual phenomenon of exclusion and alienation in education at the individual level; this study also implies how sociocultural discrimination in Korean society impacted each participant’s life. Given the participants’ critical viewpoints of the incompatible roles that KNOU plays in Korean society, this study argues that the positive social function of open and distance higher education, which is widely taken for granted, needs to be reconsidered as this national approach to higher education for adults may reinforce the current social relation highly affected by educational credentials.