An estimated 850,000 Canadian adults lack basic literacy skills. An examination of the profile and achievements of the students enrolled in the literacy education program at the Alberta Vocational Centre in Edmonton indicates that like the many other types in the broad range of adult literacy programs, the highly structured nature of the Edmonton program has made it attractive to a certain subset of the student population. Few of the Edmonton program's typical students (predominately older women with dependents) even achieve functional literacy (defined as ninth-grade equivalency). Twenty-five students enrolled in the program were surveyed to determine the reasons for this. Most of the students were not interested in literacy in and of itself; rather, they viewed literacy as a stepping stone. Most students wished to upgrade as quickly as possible and find employment. Their goal was not to achieve 12th- or even 9th-grade literacy. Perhaps because of their childhood experiences of how reading is learned, most of the students were quite stubborn in clinging to their ideas about vocabulary and phonetic theory, and most had only a vague understanding of what higher literacy skills are intended to achieve. This goes a long way toward explaining why the reading levels of students in the Edmonton program tend to rise a number of levels and then peak. It also reinforces the idea that adults who have learned to survive in a nonliterate world may be reluctant to leave it and may be content with limited gains. It should also be remembered that these gains may be all that can reasonably be expected and that they may in fact lay the foundation for future larger gains. (MN)