At the higher education level, some educators saw individualization of the college curriculum as a means for personal development and a method for empowering the students and the faculty. Notions of adult education appeared to reinforce the strong movement to individualize the college curriculum. The development of contract learning pulled together the differing ideologies and concerns of educating adults. New York's Empire State College, an entirely contract-based institution, and other such colleges faced the following problems in implementing contract-based programs: programs were often highly conventional and similar to traditional ones and programs were highly specialized with little breadth. Interrelated reasons for these seemingly antithetical situations were that many adults attend college simply for the credentials, these students do not perceive themselves as voluntary learners, students may want to dictate what they will learn, and many students are ill-prepared academically or not well-directed. Faculty issues and the general process orientation of the individualized approach compounded these problems. Adults who sought flexibility of access rather than content reshaped the original purposes of programs such as Empire State. The result of assuming too much about the learner was programs that did not empower students but left them feeling shortchanged or manipulated. (YLB)