The Unique Contributions of Universities in Adult and Continuing Education

Ask most people what universities do, and they will say teaching and research. But in India’s adult education landscape, universities carry a third, less-talked-about job: reaching people who never got a formal degree, or even a formal school certificate. The University Grants Commission gave this work a name and a structure, setting up Departments of Adult, Continuing Education, Extension and Field Outreach, commonly shortened to ACEEFO, inside universities across the country. These departments do not just run occasional literacy camps. They train the people who deliver adult education, build the materials used in the field, connect government schemes with grassroots organisations, and lend technical muscle to programmes that would otherwise struggle for expertise. Here is a closer look at each of these roles and why they matter.

Why universities got this job in the first place 🔗

The story goes back to 1978, when the National Adult Education Programme was launched and the UGC began encouraging universities to set up dedicated departments for this work. Since then, funding and policy support from the commission has helped as many as 93 universities establish Adult Education Departments, each running its own mix of literacy, continuing education, and outreach programmes. The logic behind this push was captured plainly in the UGC’s 1988 Policy of Higher Education, which argued that a university that wants to serve society fully must treat extension work with the same status as research and teaching. In practical terms, this meant setting up statutory departments, giving their faculty a seat at university governance bodies, and tying grant releases to how seriously institutions took this responsibility, as laid out in the UGC’s guidelines for ACEEFO departments.

Training the people who run adult education on the ground 🔗

Adult education does not run itself. It needs functionaries: instructors, coordinators, supervisors, and volunteers who understand how adults learn differently from children. This is where universities step in. Their ACEEFO departments design and deliver training programmes for these functionaries, covering everything from teaching methods for non-literate adults to managing a Continuing Education Centre.

Why this training looks different from a regular classroom 🔗

Adults enrolling in literacy or skill programmes bring life experience, work schedules, and specific goals with them. A functionary trained only in conventional pedagogy will struggle to hold their attention. University training programmes are built around a participatory approach instead, one that treats the field worker as someone who will adapt lessons on the spot rather than follow a fixed script. This includes training in field skills, group facilitation, and evaluation techniques, so that functionaries can judge whether a programme is actually working and adjust it if it is not.

Because universities already run degree and diploma programmes in education, they have the faculty expertise and infrastructure to do this well. A university department that teaches classroom pedagogy to B.Ed students is well placed to also train field functionaries in andragogy, the theory and practice of teaching adults specifically.

Developing teaching-learning materials that fit the learner 🔗

A literacy primer written for a ten-year-old in an urban school does not work for a forty-year-old farmer trying to read pesticide labels. Universities take on the job of developing teaching-learning materials, or TLMs, that are sensitive to the age, occupation, language, and daily reality of adult learners.

Students and researchers as co-creators 🔗

What makes this university-led process distinctive is who gets involved. It is not just senior faculty designing materials in isolation. Undergraduate and postgraduate students, along with researchers attached to the department, take part in drafting, illustrating, and field-testing these resources. A module on financial literacy for rural women, for instance, might be drafted by a student team, tried out in a nearby village, revised based on feedback, and only then finalised for wider use. This cycle of drafting and field testing is standard practice in university-run continuing education work, and it means the materials are shaped by real reactions from real learners rather than assumptions made in a seminar room.

This also gives students something valuable: direct exposure to community realities that a textbook cannot replicate. It turns the classroom into a two-way relationship between the university and the community it serves.

Networking with the agencies that make programmes reach further 🔗

No single university department, however well-staffed, can cover an entire district or state on its own. This is why networking is treated as a core function rather than an optional extra. University ACEEFO departments are expected to build working relationships with state literacy missions, NGOs, panchayati raj institutions, and international agencies.

Why this matters more under current schemes 🔗

The government’s current flagship effort, the New India Literacy Programme, is built around exactly this kind of collaboration. The scheme explicitly encourages the formation and involvement of self-help groups, voluntary organisations, and community-based bodies alongside government machinery. Universities fit naturally into this design because they already have the local presence and credibility to coordinate between different players. Policy analysts have also pointed out that the programme leans on partnerships with NGOs and private sector entities specifically to widen the programme’s reach beyond what government departments can manage alone.

Some university departments have taken this further by formalising their role. The Centre for Adult, Continuing Education and Extension at the University of Kerala, for example, was designated as a nodal agency for monitoring similar departments in two states and later selected as a national external evaluation agency for literacy and post-literacy programmes. This kind of appointment only happens when a university has already built enough of a network and enough credibility with implementing agencies to be trusted with oversight.

What networking actually involves day to day 🔗

In practice, this is less glamorous than it sounds. It means signing memoranda of understanding, sharing training calendars, pooling field staff for large surveys, and sitting on district-level committees that decide where a Continuing Education Centre should be located. Research comparing state-led and NGO-facilitated implementation models for public programmes has found that the choice of partner and the quality of coordination between them directly affects how well a scheme performs on the ground, which is exactly why universities investing time in building these relationships pays off in programme outcomes rather than just paperwork.

Providing technical and academic support that keeps quality in check 🔗

Government adult education schemes are designed at the policy level, often far from the field. Someone has to translate broad objectives into a workable curriculum, a training schedule, and an evaluation framework. Universities fill this gap by offering technical and academic backing to implementing bodies.

Curriculum, training design, and evaluation 🔗

This support usually covers three areas. First, curriculum development: deciding what a functional literacy course or a skill development module should actually contain, sequenced in a way that builds on what adult learners already know. Second, training design: structuring orientation and refresher programmes for field staff so they stay updated as schemes evolve. Third, evaluation: designing the surveys, tests, and feedback tools used to measure whether a literacy centre or continuing education programme is delivering results, and not just reporting attendance numbers.

University departments are often the only institutions in a district with faculty trained in research methodology and programme evaluation, which is precisely why state governments and central schemes route this kind of technical work to them rather than trying to build it in-house.

Putting the four roles together 🔗

Training functionaries, developing TLMs, networking with agencies, and offering technical support might look like four separate boxes on an organisational chart, but they function as one system. Trained functionaries use university-developed materials, delivered through networks the university has helped build, all while technical support keeps the quality consistent across locations. Remove any one piece, and the whole chain weakens: untrained functionaries misuse good materials, and well-trained staff without proper materials improvise poorly. This is the real argument for keeping adult education departments embedded within universities rather than running them as standalone government bodies. Universities bring subject expertise, a steady supply of student volunteers, and institutional continuity that most standalone missions cannot match on their own.

What do you think? Does your college or university run any adult education or extension activities that you know of, and have you noticed whether students are actually involved in designing them rather than just executing them?

References

1. https://www.dvv-international.de/en/adult-education-and-development/editions/aed-562001/adult-education-at-universities/adult-continuing-education-in-indian-universities
2. https://klyuniv.ac.in/acee/
3. https://www.ugc.gov.in/oldpdf/xplanpdf/adultedu.pdf
4. https://dsel.education.gov.in/nilp
5. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/new-india-literacy-programme
6. https://www.keralauniversity.ac.in/continue-education