The paper focuses on adult education as a specific educational domain. This domain has been increasingly foregrounded in recent years in response to the changing social and economic situation.In social sciences, this changing situation is reflected in the concepts of knowledge society and life-long learning. Knowledge society is society in which knowledge has become the economic commodity No. 1. Life-long learning is a new educational paradigm applied in knowledge society: learning concerns all members of the society for the whole of their lives and in all situations.Generally speaking, the process of life- long learning involves two faces of the same coin. One face is represented by the quality and functioning of the educational system providing a broad basis of knowledge and skills through formal education while the other face is adult education or further education of those who have left the system of formal education. If the Czech Republic, or indeed any other advanced country, is to move towards becoming an integrated and at the same time open system providing adequate conditions for the development of human resources during all stages of life and for reliable life in knowledge society, the prerequisite is thorough analysis and the ensuing changes (reforms) of both "faces" of the coin of life-long learning.Empiric data concerning adult education in the Czech Republic has been scarce yet. The project "Adult education in different stages of the life cycle: priorities, opportunities and potential for development" supported by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and undertaken by the Department of Educational Sciences of the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University, Brno, should be one of the first heralds of change. The paper sums up some results of the first stage of this project.A wide representative survey of the Czech adult population was conducted as the first stage of the project (spring 2005). The primary objective of the survey was to identify educational needs of the Czech population and its real integration into the system of life-long education on three levels: formal (the school system), informal (educational institutions outside the school system), and informal (unorganized education, self-education). The paper deals above all with the issues of educational needs as a situation characterized by a certain educational or competence weakness. Educational needs were then categorized based on the obtained data. We distinguish identified (existing subjectively and objectively) and unidentified (existing objectively, but unidentified by the subject) needs. Apart from that, we distinguish between satisfied (the subject is currently satisfying it by participating in life-long education) and unsatisfied (the subject has not started to satisfy it yet) needs.The paper then uses the obtained data regarding the social and employee context of the responders to characterize three adult subpopulations. The first subpopulation consists of those who are able to identify their educational needs and address them; the second one are people who are able to identify their educational needs, but do not address them. The third subpopulation is formed by adults who fail to identify their educational needs. Each of the three groups is a distinct challenge to the educational policy of the Czech Republic.