Discussing the effects of globalisation on the changes in life cycles, the article departs from the thesis that the individualisation of the life course requires people to be better prepared in terms of responsible planning of their lives. The transitions from youth to adulthood in particular are becoming ambiguous and flexible, which in turn brings changes to the period of adulthood. As a result, adulthood has lost many of its stable roles and traditional meanings and is increasingly becoming a psychological phenomenon. Of course, all of this means that adults now have to deal with crucial identity work that before was reserved for the period of youth. Here, adult education plays an important role and faces new challenges and tasks. Besides education for work (additional training and retraining) adult education plays an increasingly important social (social and technological inclusion, acquisition of new social competences to understand social developments) and especially psychological function (the development of “identity capital” necessary for an independent adult life in late-modern life circumstances).V članku razpravljamo o učinkih globalizacije na spremembo življenjskih potekov. Izhajamo iz teze, da individualizacija in destandardizacija življenjskega poteka terja od ljudi večjo pripravljenost za odgovorno načrtovanje življenja. Predvsem prehodi iz mladosti v odraslost postajajo nejasni in fleksibilni, kar spreminja tudi obdobje odraslosti. Posledično je odraslost izgubila mnogo svojih stabilnih struktur vlog in tradicionalnih pomenov ter postaja vse bolj psihološki pojav. Vse to pa seveda pomeni, da imajo zdaj odrasli opravka s ključnim identitetnim delom, prej rezerviranim za obdobje mladosti. Tu ima pomembno vlogo izobraževanje odraslih, ki je postavljeno pred nove izzive in naloge. Poleg izobraževanja za delo (dokvalifikacije, prekvalifikacije) ima izobraževanje odraslih vedno bolj pomembno socialno funkcijo (socialno in tehnološko vključevanje, pridobivanje novih socialnih kompetenc za razumevanje družbenih dogajanj) in posebej psihološko funkcijo (razvoj »identitetnih kapitalov«, potrebnih za suvereno odraslo življenje v sodobnih življenjskih razmerah)
