By Li Jiange (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-30 07:27

The English proverb, "one is never too old to learn" has a Chinese counterpart in the ancient maxim: "Huo dao lao, xue dao lao".

With the competition between nations intensifying, many countries are promoting the concept of lifelong learning in an effort to outperform their opponents and maintain their advantages. Lifelong learning systems are considered national policies in some countries.

It has become a pressing task for China to establish a lifelong learning system. The country is now in a period of rapid economic restructuring. Its 700 million laborers have to improve their skills and continue their education. Both formal education and on-the-job training should be extended. The latter is an important channel for people to obtain new knowledge and necessary skills.

At the same time, rapid changes in the economic structure have led to unemployment, making training a key concern for jobless people looking to get reemployed. A diversified mechanism for ensuring training outside of the formal education system should be set up.

The lifelong learning scheme places new requirements on the existing educational system and teaching methods. While the country's 13 million teachers should improve their skills and change their teaching techniques, 240 million students should also modify their learning styles. Besides expanding the scale of formal education and improving the quality, the educational system should give students the ability to study by themselves after leaving school.

China has a large population but still lacks human resources. Turning the burden of a huge population into an advantage for human resources will benefit economic growth. This is a strategic choice for China that will help it gain international competitiveness in the age of the knowledge-driven economy.

China is now undergoing rapid urbanization and industrialization. In the past three decades, about half of its agricultural laborers have transferred to non-agricultural sectors, and half of these people have relocated to cities. Such an unprecedented population migration has supported the fast development of the Chinese economy. Now that the labor force remaining in rural areas is stagnant and their average age is increasing, the previously unlimited labor supply has changed, which has sped up the improvement of the country's industry. The labor costs in non-agricultural sectors will rise constantly. If the country cannot set up an effective training system and rapidly improve the quality of laborers, there will be conflicts over wage increments, welfare and employment.

Statistics show that some areas have suffered labor shortages even though the total supply of labor still exceeds demand. In the coming decade or two, the total supply of labor will decrease absolutely.

Meanwhile, China is aging far faster than the rest of the world. The pension system is facing huge pressure. It seems that China will have to adopt the practice of many developed countries by postponing the retirement age and encouraging the old to work longer. Lifelong learning is particularly important in this context.

China is still far away from being able to meet its human resources needs. The prime dilemma is that the insufficient quantity and quality of educational resources has made it difficult to educate more people up to the needed level. To build a learning society, China will have to expand its pre-school education, popularize primary education, enhance middle-school education, diversify higher education, increase learning opportunities and expand the training market.

There is a disconnect between education and the market demand for talent. College graduates face difficulties finding jobs. They cannot fit into the changing environment and are unable to learn by themselves. The current methods, materials and means of formal education fall short of what is needed to build a lifelong education system. Courses and teaching resources should be adjusted according to the needs of social and economic development.

Informal education - namely, occupational education and training - faces the same problem. The country's training courses and programs are not well regulated in terms of fees, qualifications and quality. Cheap and effective training programs targeting rural surplus laborers and the urban unemployed are insufficient.

What is more, the educational facilities and resources available in China's vast rural areas are still lagging. Modern telecommunication and information technologies should be exploited.

The biggest challenge standing in the way of efforts to build a lifelong learning system is the lack of understanding about the importance of building such a system. Only when a consensus is reached among the public and governments at all levels and actions are coordinated among the education department and all sections of society will we be able to achieve our goal.

At present, the financial input into building the lifelong learning society is not sufficient. It is impractical for the government to shoulder all the expenditures alone. The government should create conditions for social investment in education. A more open system should be built to encourage the participation of the public and civil society.

The construction of a lifelong learning system is a trans-departmental systematic project that needs unified planning, coordination and management. But currently there is no unified, or high-level coordination in this field. Related functions are scattered among different administrative departments, such as education, labor, human resources and agriculture. There is a lack of connections, communications and sharing of resources. The limited educational resources in civil society are not well developed or utilized.

So guidance and coordination at a higher level should be enhanced to guarantee the creation of a lifelong learning system. The major work includes: coordinating among educational institutions, enterprises, social organizations and lifelong education organizations; promoting the concept of lifelong learning and making the whole society care about and participate in it; establishing a learning certification center to endorse and certify related credentials; making plans and related rules about lifelong learning to provide a legislative guarantee for the health and orderly development of the lifelong learning scheme.

The author is deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council

(China Daily 08/30/2007 page10)