The trend line shows that RTVU open education enrollment has increased rapidly, but is currently experiencing a slowdown.

As can be seen in Figure 2, the information stored in the CCRTVU student information database includes professional level, gender, age, marital status, educational background and native place. The authors grouped the students according to these attributes and analyzed the corresponding sub-categories to find out the changes in student composition. Table 6 lists the attributes and sub-categories. 

Table 6: Student Attributes and Sub-Categories  

Of the information above, local and non-local sub-categories were obtained by comparing the student’s native place with the provincial RTVU at which he or she is enrolled. If the student’s native place and school are located in the same province, he or she is identified as local; otherwise he or she is identified as non-local.

1. Changes in the professional level of students 

The number of students at each professional level was calculated to find out the change in the ratio between the two categories during the period of study. The results are shown in Table 7.

Table 7: Number of Students in “Open Education Undergraduate Programmes” vs. Number in “Open Education Junior College Programmes” (1999-2010) 

As can be seen in Table 7, the proportion of students in “open education undergraduate programmes” is decreasing in comparison with the number of students in “open education junior college programmes”.

2. Changes to the gender composition of the student body

We collected statistics on the gender composition of students in RTVU open education over the past 12 years and calculated the change in the ratio between the two sexes. The results obtained are shown in Table 8 and Table 9. 61 students of “unknown gender” were eliminated from the statistics.

Table 8: Gender Distribution Statistics (1999-2010)

Table 9: Gender Distribution at Different Professional Levels 

As Table 9 shows, there are a greater number of female students in RTVU open education, particularly in “open education undergraduate programmes”. Based on the changes to the ratio of male to female students over the past 12 years, we can conclude that the proportion of male students is decreasing.

3. Changes to the different age of the student body

Table 10 shows the change in the average and median age of the student body in RTVU open education.

Table 10: Average Age of Students in Open Education (1999-2010)

As Table 10 indicates, RTVU higher education students are getting younger. The median age has declined from 28 to 24. Shanghai TV University (now Shanghai Open University)^[5], Zhejiang RTVU^[6] and Guangzhou RTVU^[7] all demonstrate the same trend.