China And The US Adult Non-comparative Study Of College Of Continuing Professional Education

Adult non-degree continuing education is a kind of educational activities mainly to adult learners who graduated from some sort of schools. It is an important part in the system of adult education and lifelong learning in China. Up to now, it has made a great deal of contribution in the national economic development and the personnel training as well. Nevertheless, the United States is one of the best countries in the world which has a long history and has done much better in the field of adult non-degree continuing education. Comparing China with the United States in adult non-degree continuing education, we found that both countries have some similar characteristics,(such as the motivation to participate in this education and the trend to create the system of lifelong learning). But in the United States, there have been many excellent laws and regulations in this education, the federal government regularly investigates a lot of educational fund. It possesses a large team of quality professional teaching staff and a perfect educational quality management system. Compared with the United States, China still exists large distance and big gap in it. Therefore, the Chinese government should set up some relative regulations and laws, increase educational fund and keep it in a regularly way, build a professional team of teaching staff so as to keep it qualified.With the expansion of colleges and universities, the need of degree compensation of adult continuing education has been satisfied and met for the public. More and more people begin to pay much attention to non-degree continuing education. They expect to improve their work skills and knowledge through such education so that they can do better and get promotion in their work. It is just the time for adult learners to transfer their need of education and the transition is not only in line with the social needs and personnel training but also manifests the development trend of adult continuing education in our country. An old proverb said that "it takes ten years to grow a tree, but a hundred years to bring up a generation of people". The United States, from the beginning of the foundation of the States, has consistently attached great importance to the development of national education, training personnel of various social needs. It was because the excellence of its educational system that the United States became the most powerful educational state in the world.In this paper, the writer adopted the approaches of literature research and comparative analysis. In the first two chapters, an introduction of the theories related to lifelong learning and learning community is provided and the concept concerning adult non-degree continuing education as well. In the third and the fourth chapters, the paper sorts out the background and status of adult non-degree continuing education in colleges and universities between the U.S. and China. In the fifth chapter, it gives an analysis and comparative study of the similarity and difference of this kind of education between two countries. The last chapter, based on the problem in this educational development, puts forward some suggestions which strongly propose to set up some relative regulations and laws, increase educational fund and keep it in a regularly way, build a professional team of qualified teaching staff.