At the Fujian University for Older Adults (UOA), 50,000 students signed up in 2017, 70,000 in 2018, and 160,000 in 2019, with the mobile-registration terminal getting 560,000 hits within the first 2 hours.
As living standards have improved in China, more and more of the growing number of older people are no longer satisfied with just being looked after until they die. They expect to be able to continue pursuing growth and happiness through education. However, the lack of vacancies at UOAs has presented a barrier. What can be done about this?
Why are UOAs so popular with the elderly?
Calligraphy, Chinese painting, vocal music, Taijiquan (Tai Chi in the west), and gourd flute were among the 45 courses offered by the UOA of Fuzhou city, Fujian province, in the 2020 spring semester. In February, Mr. Weng, who has been retired for over a year, signed up for a course in Yan Ti, or one type of calligraphy.
"I signed up for a very popular course, calligraphy, in the fall semester last year, and would have missed out if someone hadn't dropped it.” In the spring, therefore, he signed up at the first possible chance.
Ms. Li, from Lianyungang in Jiangsu province, wasn’t as lucky. "The teacher said that the Erhu course was fully enrolled two months ago. Now there are only vacancies for Landscape Painting and Paper Cutting." Last year, when Ms. Li, two years retired, first came to the UOA to sign up for a course, she hadn’t expected to have so much competition. (She ended up taking Landscape Painting.)
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, by the end of 2019, China's population 60 and older had reached 254 million, accounting for 18.1% of the total population, with 176.03 million of these 65 or older (12.6%). According to a report from the China Development Research Foundation, by 2022, China's population over 65 years old will account for 14% of the total population; in short, it is a problem that will become more acute in the short term.
The Chinese government has been active in confronting this situation. In November 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council issued a plan for dealing with it that included a system of continuing education directed specifically at older adults.
"Promoting education for the elderly is an important way to meet the needs of an aging population, enhancing their quality of life and promoting social stability." According to Liu Chen, deputy secretary of the Party committee of the Open University of China (OUC), once the basic needs of the elderly, such as clothing, food, housing and transportation, have been met, it is urgent to satisfy their desire to maintain their health, have social interactions, and be able to attain self-realisation. The role of the UOA is to satisfy this desire.
At Lianyungang UOA, Ms. Li's Landscape Painting course has brought her an unexpected sense of achievement. "The teacher said that I am gifted enough to go to Beijing for further studies. Usually, classmates encourage each other, and I always look forward to attending class." Ms. Li took part in an art exhibition at the university three months after enrolling, and now spends two hours painting every day.
Wang Yanni, dean of the Academic Affairs Department of Lianyungang UOA, also feels that seniors are becoming more and more active. "In recent years, in response to demand, the university has opened computer, smartphone, photography, image-processing, video-production and English courses to older adults with the aim of helping them keep up with the times," he said.
"Older adults take classes to learn but also to interact with their classmates, and to make friends with like-minded people. Attending a UOA also allows them to continue feeling connected to society after retirement." However, according to Yang Gensheng, former vice chair of the Fujian Provincial Political Consultative Conference, vice president of the China Association of Universities for the Aged (CAUA), and President of Fujian UOA, demand for class spaces will continue to exceed supply.
What is the bottleneck constraining class availability?
Vacancies at Fujian UOA doubled from 7,000 in 2018 to 14,000 in 2019, but still fell well short of being able to accept all 160,000 applications for enrolment.
Complaints have come from students that, despite all their efforts, they have been unable to access the online-registration page. According to Wang Yanni, enrolment has been increasing by about 10% every year since 2016, and the university is at full capacity.
According to industry insiders, Shandong UOA, the first university for older adults in China, was established in Jinan in 1983, while CAUA statistics show that, by the end of 2018, there were more than 76,000 UOAs and other schools offering education to older adults in China, with a three-level "county-township-village" community-education network established for older adults.
In October 2016, the general office of the State Council issued its Development Plan for Education of Older Adults (2016-2020), which clearly stated that, by 2020, the proportion of older adults participating in various forms of education would exceed 20%.
According to Liu Chen, on the basis of the size of the senior population in 2019, about 50 million seniors should be receiving some kind of education; however, figures from June 2019 show that only 15 million of them had registered and were participating in various forms of education in China, far below the goal set by the plan.
"As the population continues to age, insufficient and unbalanced development of education for older adults, that is, a shortage of supply, has become increasingly prominent," said Yang Gensheng.
In Liu Chen’s analysis, the management of education for older adults remains insufficient, and the identity of those responsible for it unclear, with institutions from a variety of systems involved. About 70% of public UOAs at or above the county level are run by management departments for retired cadres, with others are managed by authorities such as Departments of Education and Civil Affairs, as well as Administration Offices for Senior Citizens.
In the interview, the reporter learned that, for historical reasons, group learning first appeared in government departments, large state-owned enterprises and other institutions, institutions of higher learning, and so on, with most enjoying the funding guarantees associated with retiree management, and with learning opportunities restricted to the work unit from which a given student had retired.
"Due to fragmented administration, the UOAs cannot communicate or share resources, which has limited their role and affected the scale and quality of education," said Liu Chen.
Lack of funding has also constrained development, with many institutions funding education for older adults themselves. Liu Chen said that such education is a non-profit public-welfare undertaking. At present, the focus at the national level is on funding mechanisms, but funding guarantees have yet to be established. Funding for UOAs is limited and scattered, with restrictions generally in place on how much institutions can charge for classes, making many reluctant to run UOAs.
Also, since their pay is poor, teachers tend to lack motivation, and this has affected the grassroots development of UOAs, along with the fact that, as Wu Zunmin told the reporter, managers lack specific training in and a deep understanding of education of older adults.
How can UOAs access outside resources?
Construction of a new teaching building with an area of 26,000 square meters is planned at Fujian UOA in the next two years, and this is sure to help ease the bottleneck. However, for Yang Gensheng, the population of seniors is rising so quickly that the UOAs will require help from outside.
The Development Plan for Elderly Education (2016-2020) offers guidance on this issue. "We need to stimulate market vitality and promote diversification of institutions involved into the elderly education and fund-raising channels: sole proprietorships, joint ventures, cooperation agreements or government purchases of services."
According to Liu Chen, mobilising external support along these lines will help modernise teaching facilities and support curriculum development, reform and innovation, construction of teaching platforms, training, and development of educational hardware, which will help rapidly improve the quality of education for older adults and the research and development of products targeted at it.
In his opinion, the future should see the integration of such education with other industries, the exploration of ways of running education with multiple institutions, promotion of varied services, and implementation of funding mechanism from multiple sources. "We should no longer rely solely on government investment, but look for funding from the market, social organizations, and from learners themselves."
For Wu Zunmin, the education of older adults should be integrated with continuing education as a whole so that resources can be shared and collaborations established, such as between the university and community, with facilities being kept open after school hours to provide older adults in surrounding communities space for educational activities.
Fujian UOA has recently taken the lead in this respect. According to Yang Gensheng, it has set up an off-campus centre combining medical care and education in order to promote the integration of these. In addition, the government has given support to the participation of non-governmental organizations such as the Cultural Research Association, the Activity Centre for Older Adults, and Ancestral Halls. With locations arranged and resources provided, the problem of availability of class spaces is being solved.
"We hope the government will further support and encourage enterprises and other potential stakeholders to set up UOAs, or invest in the education of older adults in other ways," said Yang Gensheng.
In terms of teacher shortages, Yang Gensheng said that the education authorities can be called on to arrange for university teachers to offer instruction, and that college graduates can be offered incentives. Furthermore, courses or subjects with larger numbers of teachers can use evaluations to remove the less capable.
Given the current shortcomings of management and standards, Yang Gensheng suggested that governments at all levels should establish a leadership system to ensure quality of management and supervision, with mechanisms in place to guarantee staffing and funding. Management, teaching and evaluation should be standardised under competent leadership and carried out in accordance with the actual situations of the provinces, cities, districts and counties where the UOAs are put in place, along with appropriate incentives and models.
What about information technology?
The growing popularity of the internet has made online learning familiar to many older adults, and the use of information technology was written into the aforementioned Development Plan, which proposed to strengthen cross-regional and cross-departmental collaboration and resource sharing, undertake digitisation of the curriculum, and develop digital resources suitable for long-distance learning by older adults.
During the epidemic, the OUC issued an initiative titled "Happy Learning and Epidemic Prevention", calling on the Open University for Older Adults (OUOA) to take advantage of its distance-education infrastructure and deliver classes to older students at home. Liu Chen said that, by the end of the 2020 spring semester, the number of students involved in this had exceeded 100,000.
"Online courses can be played back, which makes them well suited to older learners, enabling them to tailor their studies to their own levels.” The success of this live online teaching confirms Liu Chen’s confidence in the development of online education for older adults.
In the past two years, Fujian UOA has also benefited from online teaching. As the first television-based platform for teaching older adults in China, its courses achieved full coverage on three new-media TV networks, China Telecom, China Broadcasting Network and China Mobile, by the beginning of March 2020. On TV, or by logging onto a mobile app or Fujian UOAs WeChat account, students can receive popular free courses in folk dance, Chinese painting, calligraphy, vocal music, and so on.
"By the end of June of this year, Fujian's new-media broadcasts for older adults had gained 560,000 viewers, and the number of visits exceeding 6.12 million. The number of followers of the official Fujian UOA WeChat account increased from 23,000 at the end of 2019 to 30,000 in June of this year, which shows that the epidemic has motivated older adults to take advantage of distance education.” Yang Gensheng noted that a prominent feature of online teaching is the sharing of high-quality resources, which gives even those in remote areas access to quality courses delivered by excellent teachers.
Liu Chen said, "To take the mobile photography class as an example, the students can use their mobile phones to watch an outdoor photography class live streaming in the morning. In the afternoon, they can go out to take photos, and then they can display their works to the course WeChat group. The interactions this enables are very popular. In addition, homework is displayed on the course platform or through the WeChat group, and the comments of the teachers and other learners promote student participation and the overall effectiveness of the course."
In order to appeal to older people, the OUC broadcasts its online courses at fixed times, with warm greetings from the host teachers, roll calls, and live question-and-answer sessions. According to Liu Chen, "The rituals of learning have helped give distance learning the feel of a collective endeavour in which one can enjoy companionship and warmth. Although the students cannot see each other in person, they can still connect as people pursuing similar interests."
Industry insiders generally believe that the future of teaching combines online and offline, and this, according to Yang Gensheng, makes strong technical support essential. For example, new teaching buildings should be built to incorporate the infrastructure needed for online classes. At the same time, based on the characteristics of individual courses, online and offline teaching should be arranged in such a way that they will complement each other, and integrate successfully.
For Yang Gengsheng, taking advantage of information technology, understanding the physical and mental characteristics of older people, and incorporating entertainment and health-care education will help ensure that older adults gain the happiness and other benefits they hope to achieve in their classes.
By China Education Daily