On 10 October 2020, an OUC leadership team including Jing Degang, secretary of the Party Committee and president of the Open University of China (OUC), Liu Chen, vice secretary of OUC Party committee, and Lin Yu, OUC vice president, along with responsible personnel from relevant OUC departments, visited Taikang Insurance Group.
The delegation was met by Liu Tingjun, president of Taikang, and Miao Li, executive deputy president, and the two sides discussed issues related to school-running cooperation.
Jing Degang presented a brief introduction to OUC’s overall school-running circumstances and characteristics, the main contents of the OUC Comprehensive Reform Plan, the OUC’s current goals, and the “1233 Project.” He noted that the strategy of growing and strengthening the Open University for Older Adults has taken on a positive development trend in terms of constructing a school-running organisational system for education for older adults, building information management and service platforms, gathering digital learning resources, positively implementing learner services for older adults, and promoting training for practitioners in the elderly care industry.
Liu Tingjun gave a brief introduction to the general conditions of Taikang Insurance Group. He pointed out that after over the past decade, Taikang has established care communities for older adults in 15 cities across China. Four communities have been opened in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu, especially where bed shortages have been seen in Beijing and Shanghai, which shows that the number of care communities for older adults has created scale advantages and a demand for elderly care practitioners is also emerging. After communication between the two sides, Liu Tingjun gained an understanding of the changes that have taken place in the OUC in terms of its orientation, visions, and strategies, and therefore gaining a direct understanding of its school-running capabilities. This strengthened his faith in carrying out cooperation between the two sides.
Taikang Group is a leader in the field of financial insurance and big health and has established a network of services for older adults. The OUC has built a public service platform covering both rural and urban areas using modern distance open education. Both sides agreed that they would give full play to each other’s advantages in pushing forward cooperation in the fields of elderly education to provide older adults with degree and non-degree education that includes quality course resources, learning activities, and training services. The two sides would also like to work together to explore new models and mechanisms to cultivate application-oriented and skilled professionals to promote the overall quality of practitioners and boost the formation of a learning-oriented industry so as to contribute to China's transformation into a human resource power.
By Zhuge Huanyu, OUC