Part-time study by adults carried a large share of the twentieth-century expansion of higher education, yet its causes and consequences remain contested between the human-capital account of educational expansion and the credential-inflation account of social exclusion. An archival case study of McGill University (McLean & Rollwagen, 2010) showed both expansion and inflation occurring while neither theory could explain the rise, fall, and rebirth of part-time provision, and left open a connected set of questions: which mechanisms — including micro-level institutional politics, funding models, and governance arrangements — actually drive part-time adult study; whether expanded access has made higher education more equitable or produced new forms of exclusion; how women's labour-market participation and feminist movements were connected to its growth; and how distance-delivery technologies and part-time graduate programs have altered access, participation, and equity. No adjudication of the competing accounts and no settlement of the equity question are yet available in the literature; the problem remains open.

Background

Across industrialized countries, a substantial share of the twentieth-century expansion of higher education was absorbed not by young full-time students but by adults studying part-time for degree credit. Two long-standing theoretical frameworks compete to explain this expansion. Human capital theory, formulated in economics in the 1960s, holds that increasingly complex economies and workplaces raise the demand for skill, so educational provision grows to meet real productive needs. Credential inflation theory — associated with Randall Collins's historical sociology of the "credential society" and David Brown's account of the social sources of educational credentialism — holds instead that competition for status and jobs drives credentials to proliferate and lose value, so that ever-higher qualifications are demanded for the same work. Credentialism is the practice of hiring or rewarding people on the basis of their educational qualifications; credential inflation is the resulting decline in what any given credential buys in the labour market. On this view, expansion reflects social closure — the defence of advantage by groups restricting opportunity — rather than rising skill, and it can generate new forms of exclusion even as formal access widens. Part-time, degree-credit study by adults is institutionally fragile: universities usually host it through extension or continuing education units whose mandate, funding, and standing within the institution are contested, and such units have repeatedly been created, dismantled, and recreated. Against this backdrop, Scott McLean and Heather Rollwagen (2010) reconstructed from university archives the history of part-time, degree-credit study at McGill University in Canada: extensive provision in the 1920s and early 1930s, resistance to it from the 1940s through the 1960s, and reinstatement on a large scale in the 1970s. Both educational expansion and credential inflation took place over this period, yet neither theory could account for the rise, fall, and rebirth of part-time provision; the authors argued that more proximate causes — micro-level institutional politics, government funding models, and governance arrangements — must be examined, and posed several questions they explicitly left unresolved: how the rise of women's participation in wage labour markets, and the role of feminist movements, were connected to the growth of higher education and part-time study; whether expanded access for adult and part-time learners has actually made universities more equitable, or whether credential inflation and the growing differentiation of degrees have produced new forms of exclusion; and how distance-delivery technologies and the proliferation of part-time graduate programs have altered access, participation, and equity.

Problem Statement

The unresolved target, taking up the questions that McLean and Rollwagen (2010) posed in their concluding discussion, is:

  1. Explanation and adjudication. Explain the growth and uneven institutional trajectory of part-time adult study in higher education — across universities, national systems, and historical periods — and adjudicate between the human-capital (educational expansion) account and the credential-inflation (social exclusion) account, developing and testing the more proximate institutional mechanisms (micro-level institutional politics, funding models, and governance arrangements) whose necessity the McGill case demonstrated.

  2. Equity or exclusion. Determine whether expanded access for adult and part-time learners has actually made higher education more equitable, or whether credential inflation and the growing differentiation of degrees have produced new forms of exclusion.

  3. Gender. Establish how the rise of women's participation in wage labour markets, and the role of feminist movements, were connected to the growth of higher education and of part-time study.

  4. Technology and level of study. Establish how distance-delivery technologies and the proliferation of part-time graduate programs have altered access, participation, and equity in higher education.

Taken together, these questions ask for an explanatory account of part-time adult study in higher education that establishes which mechanisms drove its growth and what its distributional consequences have been. The account sought spans more than a single institution or national system and more than one historical period, adjudicates the competing human-capital and credential-inflation accounts against the evidence rather than restating either, and assesses whether expanded part-time participation reduced or reproduced inequality. It is not confined to a single case or to the returns to individual study; it takes in the competing accounts and the equity question together.

References

  1. Scott McLean & Heather Rollwagen (2010), "Educational expansion or credential inflation? The evolution of part-time study by adults at McGill University, Canada", International Journal of Lifelong Education 29(6):739–755. DOI: 10.1080/02601370.2010.523944. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2010.523944
  2. Randall Collins (2019 [1979]), The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification, New York: Columbia University Press. DOI: 10.7312/coll19234. https://doi.org/10.7312/coll19234
  3. David K. Brown (2001), "The social sources of educational credentialism: Status cultures, labor markets, and organizations", Sociology of Education 74:19–34. DOI: 10.2307/2673251. https://doi.org/10.2307/2673251
  4. Alison Fuller (2001), "Credentialism, adults and part-time higher education in the United Kingdom: An account of rising take up and some implications for policy", Journal of Education Policy 16(3):233–248. DOI: 10.1080/02680930110041042. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930110041042
  5. Scott McLean (2011), "Essor, chute, puis renaissance des études à temps partiel pour adultes à l'Université de Montréal", Canadian Journal of University Continuing Education 37(1). DOI: 10.21225/d56k5q. https://doi.org/10.21225/d56k5q
  6. Claire Callender (2011), "Widening participation, social justice and injustice: part-time students in higher education in England", International Journal of Lifelong Education 30(4):469–487. DOI: 10.1080/02601370.2011.588462. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2011.588462
  7. Jenny Chesters (2014), "Learning to adapt: does returning to education improve labour market outcomes?", International Journal of Lifelong Education 33(6):755–769. DOI: 10.1080/02601370.2014.971893. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2014.971893
  8. Gordey Yastrebov (2021), "The Demographic Echo of War and educational attainment in Soviet Russia", Demographic Research 45(22):727–768. DOI: 10.4054/demres.2021.45.22. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2021.45.22
  9. S. Guan & E. Blair (2022), "Adult higher education as both an 'opportunity' and a 'trap': student perceptions on credentialism in China", Studies in Continuing Education 44(3):362–375 (published online 17 June 2021). DOI: 10.1080/0158037X.2020.1867092. https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2020.1867092
  10. John Holford, Marcella Milana, Susan Webb, Richard Waller, Steven Hodge & Elizabeth Knight (2022), "Shaping the field of lifelong education through three critical debates in the International Journal of Lifelong Education", International Journal of Lifelong Education 41(6):549–571. DOI: 10.1080/02601370.2022.2160020. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2022.2160020
  11. Pierre Doray, Amenan Rachel Kongo & Simon Bilodeau-Carrier (2022), "Note de recherche. Les universités et leurs étudiant·es en temps de pandémie au Québec : une analyse à chaud", Lien social et Politiques 89. DOI: 10.7202/1094563ar. https://doi.org/10.7202/1094563ar
  12. Scott McLean (2023), "Champions of democracy or agents of professionalization? The extension era at the universities of Toronto, Queen's, and McMaster", Canadian Review of Sociology 60(4):646–667. DOI: 10.1111/cars.12449. https://doi.org/10.1111/cars.12449
  13. Scott McLean (2023), "No 'haughty and inaccessible ivory tower': Laval University and Adult Education, 1930–1965", Canadian Journal of Education. DOI: 10.53967/cje-rce.5679. https://doi.org/10.53967/cje-rce.5679
  14. Songyue Lin, Kaixuan Zhang, Jin Liu & Wenjing Lyu (2024), "Credential inflation and employment of university faculty in China", Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 11. DOI: 10.1057/s41599-024-03653-7. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03653-7
  15. Marcella Milana, Ulrik Brandi, Steven Hodge, Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert & Thomas Howard Morris (2025), "Skills, skills, skills! The European Commission's endorsement of a Skills-First approach and the future of adult education and lifelong learning", International Journal of Lifelong Education 44(2):127–130. DOI: 10.1080/02601370.2025.2472553. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2025.2472553
  16. Abdur Rahman Forhad & Gazi Mahabubul Alam (2026), "Education expansion, credential inflation and sustainable economic outcomes: a study on four international alliances", Asian Education and Development Studies. DOI: 10.1108/aeds-04-2026-0305. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeds-04-2026-0305