Creating a Continuum: An Anthropology of Postcompulsory Education

Abstract

Often when we think of postsecondary education, we visualize the typical college campus, students, and faculty rather than community settings in which the efficacy of postcompulsory education is debated. During my research in Atlantic Canada, I participated in such a setting when I heard a young man speak at a student rally to protest university tuition increases. He stood with an infant in his arms and said, rocking the baby gently, "I have to make it. I have to make it for her as much as for me, and if you raise the price of the ticket, it's her you'll be hurting. I can't stay a laborer and give her a future too." He was right; in most of North America today, postsecondary education is vital to gaining almost any kind of well-paying job.Aspirations for continuing one's education, however, are not just results of economic pressure. As a woman at the same rally eloquently explained,

From the Editor

“…-KATHRYN M. ANDERSON-LEVITT, Editor Note 1. Members of that committee propose that we examine the meaning of "postcompulsory education" outside of as well as inside of institutions (Jensen 1999).…”