Lina Fajerman wrote:

“I am put out by the description of non accredited learning as "infotainment 
"- a very perjorative
description of a vital activity in many peoples lives.”, and David Wilson 
wrote: “Yes, I agree.”

I surmise that Lina was triggered to write this by my reference to 
“edutainment” in my posting where I said:

“There is a need for research into how the 'old, but not over-the-hill' can 
be induced to 'stay in harness', even though they have the wherewithal to 
'shed the saddle, bridle, reins and bit'.
However it is not the sort of research endeavour that is within the 
expertise of middle-aged academics supervising raw graduates.
It should however suit some of us third and fourth generation (grandparent 
and greatgrandparent) studiers and learners. Such conjecturing about the 
fairly-immediate future seems to be something that particularly interests 
those of the third and fourth generation that 'return to college'.

But such research is very different from the 'not for credit edu-tainment' 
provision of Institutes of Learning in Later Life. (I am not decrying that 
provision. It has great value. I am just saying that research that requires 
postgraduate competencies and considerable life experience is something 
different).

Lately, I have been wondering just how many well-heeled retiree baby-boomers 
will wish to get into postgraduate research, and how it will work out.
Will it require the invention of the Master of Arts Emeritus and Doctorate 
of Philosophy Emeritus, or can universities fit it in within the rules of 
their Graduate Schools for the present MA and PhD awards?”

I would suggest that ‘infotainment’ and ‘edutainment’ are no more, and no 
less, pejorative than ‘biophysics’ and ‘biochemistry’; because they (like 
all words) are at the centre zero on the scale that runs from 
pejorative-to-adulatory. We have to do things like putting ‘merely’ in front 
of them to shift them towards the pejorative end of the scale; or ‘advanced’ 
to shift them to towards the adulatory end.

I am an engineer, not a linguist/semanticist, so I may be wrong in my belief 
that it is how we use a word (by context, or with tone of voice or accent) 
that decides where we are placing the word, at that time, in the range from 
pejorative to adulatory. But that is my belief.

For instance, ‘profession’ is only pejorative if we indicate that we have 
its Shavian definition of “a conspiracy against a laity” in mind.
And ‘higher’ is only pejorative when it occurs in phrase-constructions such 
as “Further and Higher Education”, and if we are talking of effects on our 
sense of smell.

We need our taxonomy of the various activities that have their roles in the 
studying and learning processes, and ‘infotainment’ and ‘edutainment’ seem 
to me to be useful recent additions.

David Wilson, in his posting, went on to give a helpful exposition of how 
some activities in the academic world carry credits with them, but that 
those credits will usually be irrelevant for the older clients of the 
educational establishments.
My point, as for David in his language acquisition, is that we have to 
manage to fit within the present framework or negotiate some suitable 
extensions of the framework.
To get the services of academics that I felt I needed for my 
self-development meant enrolling for an MA-by-research at my local 
university in NE Thailand, and so I had to accept those ‘artificial 
deadlines of accredited learning’ that David mentions.
Within that MA process, I found that I needed to catch up on where Futures 
Studies had progressed to in the last quarter century and enrolled for an 
on-line course with the University of Hawaii. As I didn’t want the three 
credits, they enrolled me in an ‘ungraded-and-not-for-credit’ category that 
cost me a few less dollars. I was impressed that they have extended their 
framework in this way. (I attach the report of that on-line learning 
experience that I did for the Strathclyde Conference.)

Looking at how some universities in America are marketing themselves to us 
oldies and making income from real estate for which they expect soon to be 
unable to attract young clients, it is clear that provision for mature 
studying and learning is going to be big business for academics, as well as 
for the crews of cruise liners. We will live in interesting times, and 
modifying the framework of accreditation will be an interesting process.