Comparison of Two Models of Distance Education for Lifelong Learning in China

Liping Chen, Huimin Chen () and Kaifu Zeng
Additional contact information
Liping Chen: Institute of Education, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Huimin Chen: College of Humanities and Law, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China
Kaifu Zeng: College of Humanities and Law, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 2, 1-12

Abstract: Distance education has an important role in advancing lifelong learning. In China, there are two types of providers for distance education, open universities (OUs) and Institutes of Distance Education affiliated to regular universities (IDEs). IDEs are increasing because of technology development. This study compared OUs and IDEs in China from three aspects, including development goals, decision making on enrollment, and learning experience. Through corpus analysis and interviews, this study found that although the policy orientation of OUs and IDEs is different, their actual functions are the same. This is a phenomenon of institutional isomorphism, and government plays an important role in this convergence.

Keywords: distance education; comparison; development goals; decision making; learning experience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/2/669/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/2/669/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:2:p:669-:d:1317681

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().