ZHOU Yuanqiang
(School of Continuing Education, Tsinghua University)
Abstract: The importance of lifelong learning has been recognized over the world and correspondingly continuing education plays an important role of supply to meet the demand of lifelong learning. This paper analyses from demand supply perspective the resources owned by industry in the area of education and learning, the cooperation of university and industry, the principle of cooperation, and the case of cooperation..
Keywords: University Industry Cooperation, lifelong learning, continuing education, training
1.Supply of Continuing Education and Demand of Lifelong Learning
The service of continuing education to lefelong learning constitutes the supply and demand relationship, the continuing education provides training service while the lifelong learning receives the training service. In the supply and demand of training, university mainly plays the role of supply side and organizer of service to provide training service, industry mainly as the consumer receives the service. The functions of university and industry in the supply and demand of training are analyzed in the following table.
| The functions of university and industry in the supply and demand of training |
| Sides of training | Organization of training | Implemention of training | Supply and demand of training |
| platform | content | enrollment | form | participant (person) | participant (organ) |
| lefelong learning | - | - | - | learning | student | indus. | demand for training |
| continuing education | univ. | course | univ. /indus. | teaching | lecturer | univ. /indus. | supply of training |
2.Four Aspects of University Industry Cooperation
1) The main form of university industry cooperation is that universities provide training service to industries, provide tailored training programs to companies and help companies to build their learning organizations. For example, Enterprise Distance School of Tsinghua University is serving over 1000 companies and others with students over 1 million person-times.
2) Some companies have resources of training service, such as company university or company business school. Working with those resources of companies will improve training programs of universities being more practical. For example, School of Continuing Education of Tsinghua University and a MNC jointly provided a training program, with very good balance in theory and practice, to another MNC.
3) Cooperation between universities with consulting companies is very much helpful for universities to understand companies in depth, then fully understand their taining needs, and therefore to design the best customized programs.
4) Universities usually are week in marketing and need work with marketing promotion consultant companies to promote training programs.
3.Understanding of Cooperation
The characteristic feature of cooperation is sharing resource and sharing development. The basice elements of training are student and lecturer. Through cooperation of training, people from industries will update their knowledge and companies can improve their business, while universities will receive training fee.
There are three tasks in collaboration, to find partners according to the resource necessary, to set up agreement of cooperation, and to implement the agreement. In cooperation, trust is the base, commitment is the key, quality is the future.
Universities shall fully use the platform of educational organization, clearly define themselves the organizers of lifelong education service and effectively organize all kinds of resources of companies and others to structure the cooperation network of lifelong education and learning.
（The paper was published in the 12th IACEE World Conference on Continuing Engereering Education in October, 2010）
