Education of Older Adults in Rural Areas at Adult Education Centers in Southeastern Slovenia Gabi Ogulin Pocrvina Summary:
Summary: Education for older adults focuses mainly on providing leisure activities, which does not allow avoid marginalizing older adults. In this article, we based our work on the assumption that the current educational opportunities for older adults do not meet the needs and requests of a diverse group of older adults in rural areas, and do not strengthen their power and influence. The results of an empirical study conducted in the southeastern region of Slovenia are presented. Quantitative information was gathered through half-structured individual interviews with four directors of universities for the third period of life who work at adult education centers. In our research, we tried to discover to what extent the educational opportunities in a local environment as well as the university offerings for the third period of life meet the needs and interests of older adults and to what extent and in which way adult educational centers strive to improve their educational offerings. The results show that the older adults interviewed evaluated the current educational offerings as unsuitable, while educational institutions provide different reasons for this finding, for example, insufficient knowledge about the offerings, financial reasons, unsuitable tender terms, poor activity by older adults, etc. We conclude that older adults who are more active would contribute to more suitable program offerings that match these adults’ needs and interests.