This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the 40th anniversary of the Open University of China (OUC). Rooted in the vast land of China, over the past 40 years, the university has established an educational network across urban and rural China, shaped an “internet + university” without walls, and trained countless practical professionals by following an open educational mission designed to meet the needs of local areas, grassroots communities, rural areas, and remote and ethnic minority areas, establishing the university through quality with “masters of renowned teaching,” and completing educational and teaching reform with information technology.
A few days ago, a reporter with China Education Daily interviewed Jing Degang, secretary of the Party Committee and president of the OUC, about how the OUC has seized the historical opportunity to transform from radio and television education to open distance education and beyond to intelligent education, as well as the future prospects for education.
Set up radio and television education and build a new type of university
Q: The OUC has borne witness to the tide of China's reform and opening up and has been a practitioner of Comrade Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up concept. Could you please talk about the background against which the OUC has been set up and the contributions it has made to the nation and society since it started operating?
A: The predecessor of the OUC was China Central Radio and TV University (CCRTVU). When meeting Edward Heath, former Prime Minister of the UK, during his visit to China in 1977, Deng Xiaoping said that Britain's experience in running open universities, enabling more people to receive a university education through modern means, could be studied and that China should also speed up the development of education using the modern medium of television. Initiated and approved by Comrade Deng Xiaoping, CCRTVU and 28 local RTVUs held opening ceremonies at the same time in February 1979, which opened a new chapter in the development of open and distance education in China. As part of a live CCTV broadcast throughout the nation, Hua Luogeng, a famous mathematician, gave the first class. In 2012, CCRTVU was renamed the OUC with the approval of the Ministry of Education.
Over the past few decades, the main classroom of the university has changed from the radio and television to computers and mobile phones, moving towards online technology. More than 14.4 million undergraduate and junior college graduates have been trained and non-degree educational training has been provided to hundreds of millions of members of society. Great contributions have been made to China’s economic and social development and to promoting the popularisation of higher education, the equalisation of educational opportunities, and the improvement of the quality of the nation.
As a new type of university, the OUC pays special attention to farmers, non-commissioned officers, disabled persons, ethnic minorities, old people, women, and other specific groups. Educational service projects, such as Rural Revitalisation Learner Development Plan, Cultivating New Industrial Workers, and Realising Dreams of Further Education, have been implemented. The School for the Disabled and the School of Tibet, among others, have been established, and majors suited to the vocational development needs of specific groups have been offered in a targeted way. Quality educational resources have been selected to set up a public service platform for continuing education for specific groups.
In order to act on the Party Central Committee’s poverty alleviation plan and the requirements of the Ministry of Education, the OUC has comprehensively advanced poverty alleviation through education as its top political task. It has carried out a raft of poverty alleviation practices through education by bringing into play the advantages of its united system. Poverty alleviation efforts through education have been made in the “three regions and three prefectures” of extreme poverty, partner assistance has been given to the counties of Qinglong County and Weixian County in Hebei Province, and support has been given to poverty alleviation through education in western Yunnan. It has participated in the action plan for vocational education collaboration on poverty alleviation between the eastern and western regions, poverty alleviation through the popularisation of Mandarin Chinese, and educational assistance to Qinghai Province. The “Long March Belt” Educational Project Targeted at Alleviating Poverty has been implemented with assistance provided to Tibet, Xinjiang, the army, Tongliao, and other poverty-alleviation projects. Substantial achievements have been made.
Since 2012, with the aim of building a lifelong education system and a learning society, the OUC has built a lifelong learning “bridge” to vigorously promote the construction of the credit bank, and achieved fruitful results in terms of both theoretical research and practical exploration. Under the direct leadership of the Ministry of Education, the university has conscientiously put in place the requirements of national vocational education reform, energetically promoted the construction of a credit bank for vocational education, developed a series of methods and tools with independent intellectual property rights, and designed and developed a credit bank information platform. At present, the platform has opened institutional accounts for a number of colleges and universities and training evaluation organisations. In the future, the university will speed up the construction of the national credit bank for vocational education in line with the deployment requirements of the State Council and the Ministry of Education, and coordinate the recognition, accumulation, and transfer of various different types of learning achievements from vocational education, higher education, and continuing education. As such, the construction of the national credit bank will be advanced to meet the diverse learning needs of all members of society and to make greater contributions to the construction of a society of lifelong learning for all.