The School of Continuing Education (or School of Vocation and Techniques) of AAU is an institution for both academic and non-academic continuing education. It is located on the campus of AAU, which boasts luxuriant trees and beautiful surroundings, and is equipped with teaching and service facilities like teaching buildings, a library, students’ dormitories, dinning halls, an auditorium and a indoor stadium. With excellent teaching stuff and advanced teaching facilities such as computer rooms, and multimedia classrooms, it is composed of the Administration Office, General Party Branch Office, Department of Teaching Management, Department of Teaching Affair Administration, Department of Non-academic Education and Department of Students, employing 14 teaching staff.
With the rapid development of AAU, its continuing education has made great progress. The university started adult’s higher education in 1957, and through a new round of reforms in 2011, it was renamed the School of Continuing Education (or School of Vocation and Techniques). After 50 years’ development, adult’s higher education has formed a system covering many disciplines like the liberal arts, sciences, engineering and management characterized by agriculture and forestry, and its students can be divided into three categories, namely students graduating from high schools, colleges and universities. SCE now has 71 majors, setting up correspondence stations at Fuyang, Nanling County, Changfeng County, Huangshan, Suixi County, Ma’anshan, Jing County, Anqing, Jingde County, Suzhou and Ningguo with more than 1,100 students. Since the talents cultivation project,“A Graduate at a Village” was implemented in 2007, nearly 10,000 graduates stationed in villages as technical advisors have been trained to work in over 70 counties and districts in 14 cities of Anhui province. SCE has awarded a lot of titles such as “Outstanding Unit of Adult’s Higher Education in Anhui ”.
SCE, advocating and implementing the educational policy of the Communist Party of China (CPC), has made great efforts to develop non-academic education since the 1980s and has explored the well-known “Dabieshan Mountain Path” together with local government and residents. For many years, it has undertaken a wide range of training activities successively hosted by the Organization Department of Anhui Provincial Party Committee, Anhui Provincial Agricultural Committee, Science & Technology Office of Anhui province and Anhui Provincial Committee of Science & Technology. Apart from those, it also participates in trainings held by organizational and technological departments at the city and county level, focusing on improving the ability of professional technicians. Meanwhile, it undertakes some trainings outside Anhui, in total training two million technicians.
