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In brief, these developments facilitate the growth
of the continuing education industry, which serves
mainly the demands of a lifelong learning market.
Therefore, numerous universities are aggressively
directing themselves to the balance between
academic programs and market-driven continuing
education, and adapting themselves to the new era
(Chen, 2002). To integrate the two perspectives,
some universities have begun developing a
comprehensive model that forms the basis for the
positioning and administration of schooling.
As universities are paying much more attention
on the internal and market effectiveness under the
global trend of marketization in education (Dai,
2000), the educational quality management system
has become an important mechanism for universities
to reach for excellence (Cheng, 2005).
While many advanced countries have built their
own evaluation mechanisms for higher education,
more than ten universities in Taiwan are attempting
to improve their educational qualities by introducing
international accreditations, for example, ISO9000
family, to perform self-evaluation and continuous
improvement. However, the quality accreditation
structure of ISO 9001:2000 cannot fully conform to
the specific demands of the higher education
institutes. An adjustment is necessary for the
applicability of these standards to be a quality
assurance framework that continually improves
educational qualities.
2 THE CONTINUING
EDUCATION IN UNIVERSITIES
From the global popularity of lifelong learning,
higher education institutions have paid increasingly
more attention to continuing education and have
begun to promote continuing education units to a
higher administrative level in a university. In this
manner, the education provision model and scope
can be strategically defined and executed. In the
United States, the School of Continuing and
Professional Studies at New York University (NYU)
is one of the benchmarks in contemporary
continuing education. For adult learners studying for
career advancement or intellectual enhancement,
courses and programs range widely in subjects and
variety. Except for various non-degree courses, the
continuing education program at NYU offers 14
masters programs, 26 undergraduate programs,
various diploma programs, and professional
certificates (NYU, 2010). Meanwhile, Columbia
University established the Division of Special
Programs under the School of General Studies in
1995. After realizing the trend in lifelong learning,
Columbia University’s Board of Trustees
reorganized the department to The School of
Continuing Education in 2002, and granted its
authority to offer the Master degrees.
In Asia, the development of continuing
education in Hong Kong has gone through different
phases, which are the continuing education phase,
professional education phase, diploma education
phase, and lifelong learning phase. By consecutive
integration and expansion, continuing education in
Hong Kong has formed a new model of international
continuing education that is well conformed to a
knowledge-based economic society (Yang, 2007).
Under the influence of educational systems and the
openness of education regulations in the U.K., the
promotion of continuing education at the University
of Hong Kong is very active and aggressive. The
Department of Extra Mural Studies (DEMS) was
established in 1956, and was renamed the School of
Professional and Continuing Education
(HKUSPACE) in 1992. The school is the largest
institution for continuing education in Hong Kong
and has 12 teaching centers with an enrollment of
over 100 thousands students per year. Except for
HKUSPACE, the School of Continuing Education in
Hong Kong Baptist University was established in
1975. More than 5,000 students are enrolled in
undergraduate or postgraduate programs, while
approximately 40,000 students study part-time
programs annually. Since 1985, the school has even
provided various degree programs collaboratively
with different overseas educational institutions.
In Taiwan, the Ministry of Education (MOE)
announced related statements for higher education to
provide continuing education in 1989, and
regulations for establishing night school in 1991.
The most important event for the government to
promote lifelong learning was to design a set of
regulations for continuing education in higher
education, which were derived from Item 2 of
Article 26 in the “University Act.” The regulations
proclaim in writing that “Continuing education,
according to the educational vision of universities, is
meant to provide the educational activities that help
the public to gain intellectual skills and social
civilization.” Conversely, the regulations also
specify that “Continuing education in universities is
categorized into degree and non-degree programs;
the courses belonging to the former must conform to
the University Act; continuing education can be
given outside the school or in the form of distance
learning, or cross-border leaning.” These regulations
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