Adult and lifelong learning: implications for sustainable development and employment creation

This study was carried out to ascertain the extent to which lifelong learning and continuing education enhanced workers’ professional competence; sustainable development; and employment creation. It adopted a descriptive design. A purposive, multistage, random sampling procedure was used to select 200 (116 males and 84 females) students of the Distance Learning Institute (DLI), University of Lagos. Data was collected using a questionnaire and an interview schedule. The results showed that majority of the respondents affirmed that lifelong learning and continuing education enhanced both the intellectual growth and industrial intelligence of employed workers. Some 96.5 percent of the respondents asserted that the possession of a university degree certificate is desirable for sub-degree holders or holders of associate degrees to gain competitive advantage in access to social and economic resource including employment creation. It is recommended that the National Universities Commission (NUC) urges institutions providing continuing education programmes to complete its accreditation processes in order to establish excellent academic standards.Keywords: Lifelong learning; ODL; Quality assuranc