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There are many population trends that can affect adult education. Factors such as household size, population growth, or advances designed to accommodate increasing populations can affect adult education programs and how they are implemented as well as who they attempt to attract. This paper will attempt to explain how population changes are a trend that can greatly impact adult education in both positive and negative ways. To support this claim, Frank Lorimer will show how education programs designed for individual learners in a largely populated city can backfire. On the other hand, Timothy Besingi will discuss the benefits of developing adult education policies that are focused on adult learners as individuals. Both scholars will show how education programs in largely populated areas will be affected by population changes.

Issues With Individual-Focused Policy
Many metropolitan areas have experienced significant growth over the past few decades and this growth has an astounding effect on adult education programs. For instance, in an adult education study in Brooklyn by Frank Lorimer, there is evidence that metropolitan areas have developed newer, more productive adult education programs to support the population growth. This study also showed that household size in this community had an effect on the level of education that certain adults had received over the course of their lifetimes.
Lorimer asserted that educational facilities today were so sophisticated that "the problems of metropolitan culture are focused in the problem of individual participation." (481). This statement suggests that even though metropolitan population is at an all-time high, the advances in technology and education institutions is so great it allows a focus on the learner as an individual. This line of thought implies that it is through the education of adult learners individually that will promote growth in the community overall. An adult education program that focuses on learners as individuals may seem to better for each individual learner. In such a system, it would appear that the individual experiences and prior knowledge of the learner would be considered valuable and crucial in the learning process. However, Lorimer later suggest that the reality of educational institutions attempting to reach every adult learner individually can produce the problem that in trying to reach "everyone" with a single systematic approach the institutions will actually prevent

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