According to the seventh national population census, the number of people aged 60 and above in China has already reached 264 million, accounting for 18.70% of the total population.
This number is expected to exceed 300 million in 2025 and 487 million in 2053. As the population ages, there is also a growing demand for education for older adults and an increasingly prominent “supply and demand contradiction” among universities for older adults in recent years.
The Party and the state attach great importance to this problem. In November 2019, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the National Medium-and Long-Term Plan on Population Ageing and raised “the initiative to develop universities for older adults”. The plan put forward a series of tasks and requirements, such as the innovative development of education for older adults and proactive development of universities for older adults. In November and December 2021, the CPC Central successively issued the Guideline of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Strengthening the Work on Aging in the New Era, the Guideline to Promote the Development of National Undertakings for the Aged and Improve the Elderly Care Service System During the 14th Five-Year Plan Period, and other documents, and explicitly deployed the major task that “We will prepare to establish the Seniors University of China based on the Open University of China (OUC) to build a national public service platform for the sharing of elderly education resources.” The report delivered at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed that “We will promote the digitalisation of education and build a society and country of learning where lifelong learning is pursued by all” and reiterated that “We will pursue a proactive national strategy in response to population ageing,” providing a fundamental principle for us to follow in developing education in the new era.
To this end, it is necessary to build consensus, seize the opportunity, overcome difficulties, and make more places at universities available for older adults, contributing the strength of open education to the happiness of older adults with the new mindset of “enjoying learning at any age”.
The first task is to ensure the integration of the active services of universities for older adults into the new development pattern, provide all-inclusive public services for older adults throughout the country, expand the supply of education for older adults by making use of information technology and platforms, and fully guarantee the coverage of education for older adults. We will do our best to meet the learning needs of the elderly by setting out to find solutions to their loneliness in multiple online and offline ways.
The second task is to fully leverage the advantages of the OUC educational system, build an educational network of the Seniors University of China, and step-up efforts to solve the problem of inadequate and unbalanced development of such universities. We will reach out to townships, neighbourhoods, villages, and communities by relying on the integrated operation pattern of open universities. We will unite various schools at all levels to bring their own advantages into play and participate in supporting the operation of the Seniors University of China in multiple forms.
The third task is to focus on the supply of learning resources and step-up efforts to solve the problem of insufficient supply of quality learning resources and weak teaching service ability of universities for older adults by bringing together learning resources from enterprises, industries, and institutions of higher education. Based on the integration and convergence of lifelong education resources, we will serve more elderly people via the online-offline integrated teaching model.
The fourth task is to increase the number of teaching teams and solve the problem of single-structured teaching teams by relying on the advantages of the OUC’s full-time and part-time teachers. We will make full use of the teachers who already work within the OUC educational system, strengthen the training of administrators and teachers of universities for older adults, build a teacher database for education for older adults, and advance the construction of the professional development mechanism of teachers in universities for older adults.
The fifth task is to step-up efforts to solve problems such as the low application of information technology, scattered resources, and redundant construction by relying on the advantages of the OUC platform construction. We will break through the supply dilemma of teaching and management resources in universities for older adults in communities and offer support for online teaching, learning support, big data statistics, and digital learning maps through resource integration, building, and sharing.
It could be said that removing the difficulty of getting a place at universities for older adults is just a starting point. Behind the problem is the need for systematic reform of everything from teachers to contents, from operation networks to service model, which may eventually bring about profound changes to the learning and living styles of the so-called “silver society”. The preparations for the establishment of the Seniors University of China will ensure the exploration of a high-quality development path suitable for China’s national conditions that is innovative in operation mode, rational in operation structure, open in resource sharing, and flexible in learning method.
Written by Jing Degang, secretary of the Party Committee and president of the OUC
Reprinted by OUC News Network from Guangming Daily