Research on the Functions of China’s Open University in the Perspective of Lifelong Education

Open universities are adult colleges and universities engaged in higher specialist and undergraduate qualification education, supported by modern information technology and using modern distance and open education as the main form. Open universities are generally found in county-level cities and above. Students enrolled in the program are generally those with qualifications from ordinary high schools, vocational high schools, amateur high schools, junior colleges, technical schools, vocational schools or equivalent. The programs are comprehensive, with advanced teaching facilities and strong teaching staff. Open education is an important form of lifelong education and an important way to promote the comprehensive quality of all people. Open universities continue to build open, flexible, convenient and efficient learning platforms, break the time, geographical and spatial constraints, make full use of modern long-distance information technology, and improve the “cloud” resources, so that people can learn at any time, any place, independently and conveniently, which plays an important role in the construction of a lifelong learning system and in the improvement of the comprehensive quality of all people. In recent years, the national open university system has adhered to the principles of “people-oriented, community-based, integrated and coordinated, and reform-led”, focusing on co-ordination and collaboration, giving full play to the leading role of the open universities, focusing on policy guidance, focusing on the development of special features, and joining hands with all kinds of educational resources to build open and diversified channels for the supply of academic education, vocational skills training for employment and entrepreneurship, elderly education for effective services, and off-campus education for young people in a multi-dimensional and accurate way, which will surely result in more achievements in the future in the fields of open academic education, vocational education, community education, and elderly education, and so forth.