On the road: An educational model based on demonstration
In 2014, The Guidelines of the Open University of China on Promoting Elderly Education proposed that “As far as the OUC’s energetic promotion of education for older adults is concerned, it is not only a prominent way for the OUC to promote the concept of lifelong learning for all but also a strategic choice for the OUC to expand its social function and realise ‘running the university in the society’.”
In November 2019, the “1233” Project was put forward at the First Party Congress of the Open University of China with the goal of implementing the three strategies of creating excellence and improving quality in degree education, developing and growing external education and training, and strengthening and improving the Open University for Older Adults. Universities for older adults were thus included in the overall strategic consideration of the OUC.
In August 2020, the Ministry of Education issued The OUC Comprehensive Reform Plan, which stated the need to make the OUC into a major platform for lifelong education in China, a major platform for online education, and a platform for flexible education and external cooperation. Relevant leaders of the State Council put forward explicit requirements that the OUC should build itself into a demonstration platform for education for older adults.
In January 2021, during her investigation trip to the OUC , Gu Xiulian, vice chairperson of the Standing Committee of the 10th National People’s Congress, director of the Working Committee of Care for the Next Generation, and honourary chairperson of the China Association of Universities for Older Adults, said that the OUC has actively developed education for older adults with own distinctive characteristics and has made remarkable achievements. She hopes that in the future, the OUC will tap into the potential and role of older adults, so that they can really accomplish something, and get access to education and happiness. It should pay full attention to the urgent needs of older adults at the grassroots level and immerse itself in grassroots work, so as to provide a range of learning services for older adults. It should give full play to its own characteristics and advantages, innovate and develop education for older adults, and create a national model of education for older adults.
At the OUC’s ceremony to kick off the “Happy Learning and Respecting Older Adults” joint action, Wu Yushao, member of the Party Group of the Office of China National Committee on Ageing (CNCA) and vice president of CNCA, pointed out that the demand for education will increase during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. He said that the OUC, with its advantages in terms of operation system, resources, teachers, courses, and information construction, will become a major force for effectively expanding the coverage of education for older adults and realising leapfrog development, especially in terms of making up for the lack of community-based education for older adults. The OUC has great potential and bright prospects.
Throughout 2020, leaders from 18 ministries and commissions visited the university to investigate education for older adults, including director-general Wang De from the Financial Management Department of the National Government Offices Administration. They also fully confirmed and recognised the education services for older adults provided by the OUC.
Education for older adults has been attracting increasing attention from the state, relevant ministries and commissions, schools, and all walks of life. This indicates the significance of education for older adults in building a lifelong learning system and promoting harmonious social development. It also heralds the coming of an important development period for education for older adults.
Since its establishment in 2015, the OUOA has focused on its own construction and leadership in developing education for older adults. It has enthusiastically explored external cooperation mechanisms for education for older adults to build a new pattern for the development of education for older adults in cooperation with a range of social parties. It has successively initiated cooperation between enterprises and universities for resource sharing, including over 30 medium and large care institutions for older adults, as well as enterprises engaged in services for older adults. It has also joined the China Association of the Universities for Older Adults, the Union of the Third Age University in Higher Education Institutions, and the CNCA. It has been approved as one of the first scientific research bases for ageing by the CNCA.
The OUC’s Weishanzhuang Campus will be used to build a high-level national OUOA entity. Centred on the integrated development concept of “health care, preservation, learning, and travel,” a leading national and renowned international “composite of education and elderly care” will be built to create a national demonstration base for education for older adults. In the future, an intelligent learning environment will be completed based on artificial intelligence and 5G. Furthermore, a 3D service network made up of online and offline tutorial centres for education for older adults covering both urban and rural areas all over China will be developed.
Jing Degang, secretary of the Party Committee and president of the OUC, has said in several speeches that “We should care for older adults the same way we care for our children and develop education for older adults the same way we do for young people. Only in this way can we be true supporters and companions, and can universities for older adults be truly bettered and strengthened.”
In the future, universities for older adults will be more than a place for older people to learn. By better developing education for older adults, these universities will become a base for old friends to reconnect, a platform to showcase their talents, a healthy environment to join in and take part, and a place to “refuel” with new skills and a new career, helping older people to alleviate loneliness. The vitality of older adults and their positive energy will be passed on to society through the window of universities for older adults. The social public’s inherent cognition of older adults and the ageing will be refreshed, which, in turn, will expand the influence of education for older adults, making “old people’s access to learning” really become a key ingredient in the construction of the lifelong learning system.
At the start of its seventh year, the OUOA is once again setting sail on a new journey. The OUOA will live up to expectations and press ahead on this new journey. It will work hard to become “a new model” of “Internet Plus education for older adults” and “a national team” within the lifelong learning that makes learning accessible to older people.
By Jiang Haiyan, OUC