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Dr. Yang Zhijian has been President of the Open University of China (OUC) since July 2010. Prior to that, he served as Deputy Director-General of the Higher Education Department of the Ministry of Education of China.
In 1991 he paid an academic visit to Ohio University in the USA. In 2003 he obtained his doctorate of education at Peking University. He worked within macro management and macro policy-making from 1983 to 2010 at the Ministry of Education. He is very experienced in educational management and educational policy-making, which has been well-recognized. His academic interest mainly focuses on research on higher education and mass higher education. He has published many academic papers in leading academic journals of China and his monograph Research on the Objectives of Cultivating Undergraduates in Chinese Higher Education Institutions (HEI) was published in 2005. In this book, he explored and discussed the formation, evolution, the issues and challenges of undergraduate programmes in HEIs since the establishment of the new China.
Since he took over as President of OUC, he has proactively supported OUC's participation in international activities in the field of the ODL and facilitating the implementation of joint projects, such as the Confucius Institute in Michigan State University and sponsorship of the 24th ICDE World Conference.
Dr. Yang is chief designer of the ongoing innovation at OUC, aiming to establish a new type of open university in China with increased flexibility and openness. According to the National Outline for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development, the Chinese Government now pays great attention to the establishment of a lifelong learning society, and OUC is hoping to take the leading role in this. Dr. Yang is now - through his leadership of OUC - exploring the effective operating mechanisms and management model to meet the needs of the lifelong learning society in China.