| This study describes adult higher education in Tianjin, People's Republic of China, during the years 1976 to 1988, from the perspective of the Chinese authorities in education and government directly responsible. It is based on interviews conducted by the author in Tianjin over a two-year period. The Municipal Commission on Education and Public Health and the Second Education Bureau, Tianjin's highest authorities for adult education, endorsed this research.;Tianjin is China's third largest municipality and a major industrial city. In the vanguard of developments since the first days of the People's Republic, Tianjin was the first city to construct a complete system of adult education, from basic literacy to university levels. For these reasons, it was an ideal subject for this study.;A brief summary of education in old China and a more detailed overview of the early stages of adult education in the new People's Republic, from 1949 to 1965 and from 1966 to 1975, were presented as background. The author constructed this overview from the first-hand accounts of officials active in the field from 1949 to the present. Current problems in education, illustrated by reports on the extremely low educational and technical levels of China's work force, were set in a historical perspective.;A dramatic shift in focus occurred after 1976, and national efforts were then concentrated on the implementation of the Four Modernizations Program, an intensive drive to modernize agriculture, engineering and science, transportation, and national defense by the end of the century. Since the regular universities lacked the capacity to produce the numbers of personnel required for rapid industrialization, adult higher education fulfilled a major portion of this critical initiative and thus assumed a central position in economic development.;Adult institutions have graduated more than twice the number of students as the regular universities at less than half the cost; they were estimated to fill more than half of China's current needs for trained personnel. Education officials, supervisors in the workplace, and adult students themselves testified to the success of adult higher education programs. Although adult higher education has undergone rapid development to the present and has demonstrated tangible benefits, this study also identified a number of significant problems that await solution as it continues to evolve. |
