| The higher education examination program for the self-taught is an academic examination system for self-learners approved by the State Council in1981. It is operated and managed through three steps—self-taught, social assistance and national examination, which is an indispensable part of the higher education system in China and an important support to the construction of lifelong education system. It aims at encouraging the in-service persons to complete their college education through self-learning and improving their quality in ideology, morality, science and culture so as to meet the needs of the socialist construction of modernizations.In the early1990s, the former State Education Commission and the Ministry of Agriculture jointly promoted the development of higher education self-taught examination to the countryside with a variety of agriculture related majors, which achieved good results. The agriculture related self-taught examination in Hebei reached its peak in2005with the annual registration of over0.22million people. In recent years, the registration for self-taught examination has been declining because of the expanded enrollment of the regular higher education, the advent of distance education and the low admission of adult education. What’s worse, some examinations have been cancelled due to the low registration for them.The survey shows that there is an extensive need of the self-taught examination for the agriculture related majors in the vast rural areas and grassroots units in villages and towns. There are four reasons for the declination of the registration for the self-taught examination:1. Some majors and their curriculum systems are not reasonable, the examinations for them are difficult for self-learners, which results in the weak sustainable development.2. There is prevalence that theories are valued and practices are neglected in the textbooks and examinations, which gives rise to the repulsiveness in the self-learners.3. There is a missing link between the examination and job qualification certificate, which affects some learners’ interest in the self-taught examination.4. The scope of the candidates for examination is too narrow and the source of the self-taught students is limited, which results in the less registration for the examination.With the guidance of the modern concepts of new quality, new function, new service, macro further education and curriculum outlook based on the course of work, the present paper raises the suggestion that agriculture related majors of junio r college education be integrated into two—Modern Rural Economic Management and Comprehensive Agricultural Technology. It also lists for the two majors the types of courses, curriculum structures and contents, and evaluation modes on the basis of adaptability, applicability, practicability and comprehensiveness. It puts forward the suggestions that a variety of agriculture related curriculum model be constructed to keep up with the social development, that assistance system of the combination of social assistance with the school education be established with the help of various channel advantages, that the platform for the network curriculum be set up for the agriculture related self-taught examination to follow up the network era, that the publicity of the agriculture related self-taught examination be promoted, that the platform of the extension of agriculture related examination to the countryside be built and improved, that the learning service system of agriculture related self-taught examination be perfected. |
