China & Distance Learning

When television broadcasting developed in China in the early 1960's, TVU (Television Universities) began in the capital - Beijing. Between 1960 - 1966 over 8,000 students had graduated and 50,000 students had completed single courses.

However it changed historically for China in 1976 for the Socialist Modernization Project came into place which meant that so many people within the 'modernization of industry, agriculture, national defence and science and technology' had to become trained, which would result in 3.5 million teachers to be trained - 'Such a huge task of training so many qualified people cannot be fulfilled by relying solely on conventional colleges and universities within a limited time-scale.' Due to this and to the fact that the TVU would require less funds, the state council approved of higher education to be taught via the CRTVU - 'the Central Radio and Television University'.

The CRTVU run at five levels:

• 'The CRTVU, at the highest level, is under the direct leadership of the State Education Commission (formerly called the Ministry of Education).
• The PTVUs, at the second level, are under the auspices of provincial governments.
• Their branch schools, at the third level, come under profectural/civic governments.
• Work stations, at the fourth level, are run either by district/county education bureaux or by a particular industry.
• The teaching and learning classes (usually called television classes), at the lowest level, work directly with TVU students'

The CRTVU 'has offered 150 courses in the subject areas of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, economics, accounting, statistics, finance, banking, industrial management, commercial management, archives management, journalism, law, library science and Chinese language and literature, etc.' These courses that are presented to the students are all at undergraduate level, however there are some short courses for continuing students - are they short courses because they want to get them educated and into the industry straight away?

'The TVU courses are multimedia, consisting of radio, television and printed materials,' and although in 1986 audio and video cassettes became available to me when you are studying a course to do with science and your are trying out experiments, how does it compare to the real life teaching? How do you really know if you are doing it right? And what would you do if you are doing it wrong?

It seems that people of all ages are/have taken part in this sort of distance learning - 'The TVUs' target students are in-service adults, secondary-school graduates and young school-leavers waiting to be assigned jobs.' However, i might be wrong, but don't the school children start schooling at such a young age, thus what are the age of these 'young school leavers'? In addition, although i feel that from that reading there does seem to be many positive aspects to the TVU, it alerted me when the premier of the State council was discussing the TVU - 'The development of television universities is suitable for China as it is an effective way of training more people at lower cost in a shorter period of time.' To me right now, i don't see how i could have benefited from distance learning learning only and although the TVU was needed at the time it was created is it still needed now? Or is education such as the TVU the way forward? To me, I'm not convinced, what do you all think?