In Scotland, further education colleges provide 28% of all higher education; this includes over half of part-time undergraduate higher education. This provision has contributed to wider participation in higher education in Scotland by “non traditional” students and to progress towards a mass system of higher education within a learning society. This thesis is a case study of higher education students in a Scottish further education college. It explores the nature of the students’ experience and its relevance to institutional management and higher education policy. Evidence is drawn from the college’s records, from focus groups and from a questionnaire survey of whole year groups (full-time and part-time students) over three successive years. The theoretical focus is upon a new definition of lifelong learning as learning integrated with life, drawn from literature on motive, motivation, participation and retention. The research explores the students’ experiences of combining study with work and family life. The student experience is found to be heterogeneous, complex and distinct from the stereotype of a young full-time university student. Vocational motives predominate and there is evidence of a significant investment of meaning, expectation and purpose in the experience of higher education. The students’ ability to balance and integrate learning with life is a determining factor in the achievement of sustained participation. The quality of support networks both in college and in the students’ work and family lives are found to be more significant than personal or demographic characteristics. The case study contributes to current thinking about the professional role of college senior managers in creating a student-centred institutional culture that responds to the complexity of the students’ experience. A case is made for a review of the current inequity of financial support for full-time and part-time higher education students and of the marginal status of colleges in the development of higher education policy.

The dissertation addresses the issue of the relationship of parenthood, employment and economic inactivity of childcare holders. It focuses on the mother's motivation to work (mothers taking care of children under 3 years of age) in the context of Czech social policy measures. The aim of the thesis is establish proposals for measures that would encourage the motivation of women with children up to 3 years to return to work and simultaneously quantify the impact of these measures on the state budget. This dissertation builds up on the underlying studies (Jahoda, Šinkyříková, 2011; Kalíšková, 2012). These studies deal mainly with examining implemented reforms in the view of their support to women's employment and their effects on household incomes. The decision making of mothers about their involvement in the labour market was analyzed by indicator of Effective cost of return to work. Negative net financial effect of returning to work was found independently of the region and the extent of the examined working time of women, taking care of children up to 2 years. For mothers taking care of children from 2 to 3 years old was this negative net financial effect detected only partly. This result clearly demonstrates that mothers, taking care of children below 3 years of age, entering the labour market are confronted with very high additional costs that would not be covered by their income from employment and other received benefits. Estimated amount of potential wages, which would encourage women to return to work, reach in some cases up to four times the median wage of women in the region. Given these findings, this dissertation proposes several specific social policy measures, which would support the mother's incentives to work return. Economic effects of the proposed measures were quantified, including the cancelation of conditional entitlement to parental benefit, introduction of tax relief for working mothers and 50% relief on employer's mandatory contributions, which employ parents part-time. Implementation of these measures, which would motivate more women to return to work, would bring an estimated net income effect for the state budget amounting to 9.5 billion crowns per year.

Diploma thesis "The conditions of university - educated mothers of little children re- entering the labour market in the Czech republic" deals with reasons of long term interruption of qualified womens' career. The most frequently, they stay at home taking care of children three years, inspite of the fact, that they are motivated by their human capital and their need of self fulfillment to get back to their job as soon as possible. The thesis is based on the assumption that there is a substantial tension between work and family life of university - educated women. The thesis identifies which factors influence the period these women stay away the labour market. Besides a human capital, there is a frame of the family and institutional policy, a kind of household division of labour and culture context. The thesis focuses on tertiary - educated mothers' preference on their professional and household engagement. It also focuses on structural conditions in the labour market, institutional policy and the role of employer in reconciliation of work and family life. The thesis brings a contribution for its focus on university - educated women with their specific characteristics, and for its focus on employers' family - friendly activities.

The topic of this thesis is the support of Equal Opportunities for women and men in the labor market and to reconcile work and family life, funded by the European Social Fund. The thesis consists of an introduction, a theoretical part, a practical part, a conclusion and appendices. In the theoretical part there are the first introduced policies of the European Social Fund for the period 2007 - 2013 and then their application in the Czech Republic, made up mainly of the Operational Programme Human Resources and Employment and just his area of support 3.4 Equal opportunities for women and men in the labor market and to reconcile work and family life. The issue of equal opportunities for women and men is also used in the context of EU and in the context of labor market in the Czech Republic. Custom research is designed in order to analyze the implementation of the above- mentioned areas of support, specifically in the region Vysočina on the basis of already approved projects, using quantitative and qualitative content analysis. At the request Those projects are discussed both negative and positive gender lens. It is therefore a real form of project applications that are approved and draw on the financial resources of the European Social Fund.

The diploma thesis deals with problems of employment and unemployment policy from the special point of view: the use of equal opportunity of men and women (gender equality) in the Czech Republic, Germany and the European Union. The theoretical part describes employment, unemployment, promotion of women and men at employment market from the gender point of view, and discriminatory differences in the field of financial evaluation of men and women for the same amount and kind of work. The practical part gives the comparison of the employment policy from the gender perspective (rate of employment and unemployment of men and women) on the basis of statistical information of the member states of the European Union {--} the Czech Republic and Germany. The main goal of this work is to show and emphasize the fact, that some aspects of discrimination in the field of gender relationships at work and in private life still exist even in the present modern society. It depends on all of us mainly, in which way and direction these problems of gender equality will develop in the society in future.