Abstract
Population aging has emerged as a social issue in most countries worldwide. Developing education for the elderly is one of the key strategies to combat the challenges of an aging population. Based on the two-dimensional analysis framework of the policy instruments and the type of elderly education, the content analysis method was used to analyze 49 elderly education policy documents developed and issued in China over the last four decades in this study. This study aims to provide a reference for the formulation of education policies for the elderly in China and other countries. The results indicated that the allocation of policy instruments was inconsistent between and within types. It is imperative to issue new programmatic documents, optimize the allocation of policy instruments, and enhance their adaptability, thereby boosting the development of elderly education.
1. Introduction
Population aging has emerged as a social issue on a global scale during the 21st century [1, 2]. The results of China’s seventh population census, conducted on November 1, 2020, revealed that the country’s population included 260 million individuals aged 60 years and above, constituting 18.7% of the total population. Among them, 190 million people were aged 65 years and above, accounting for 13.5% of the total population [3, 4]. Developing education for the elderly is an important strategy for managing the aging population in China [5]. By the end of 2019, a network of 76,000 universities (schools) tailored for the elderly, spanning various types and levels, had 10.882 million students [6]. Implementing scientific and effective policies regarding elderly education is essential to promote its healthy development of elderly education. Over the past 40 years, China has issued numerous national policies related to the education of the elderly. These policies aim to standardize the management of elderly education, increase the resource input of government departments, social organizations, enterprises, and individuals in elderly education, and expand their scale. The ultimate objective is to ensure that a greater number of older adults have equal access to the resources of education services. As a large population and an emerging aging country, China’s elderly education policy has served as a valuable model for similar countries.
Recently, the Chinese government has successively issued a series of policies on elderly education. However, most of these policies focused on policy documents related to aging issues, such as population work, aging work, elderly care, medical health, and culture [7]. Variations in the external environment, including politics, economy, culture, and population, have modified China’s elderly education policies with respect to motivation, value orientation, implementation path, policy target, and other aspects. This adjustment has proven to be advantageous in ensuring the development of education for the elderly. However, a delay persisted in implementing the elderly education policy, resulting in a slow development of elderly education. The factors contributing to the aforementioned delay were the inadequate legal basis, deviation of the executive body, incomplete management system, imperfect supervision mechanism, outdated concept of aging development, unequal basic rights, limited diversity of choices, insufficient educational empowerment, human development awareness, and educational stratification [8]. Previous studies have investigated the problems and factors that have influenced the developmental stages of China’s elderly education policy, such as policy formulation, policy development and variation, and policy implementation, and have provided valuable recommendations regarding the framework and implementation of the policy system [9]. To a certain extent, these studies can help policymakers formulate more effective policies for education for the elderly. However, the primary limitation common to existing studies is that the research objects are restricted to external factors of the elderly education policy, such as policy-making, policy development, and policy implementation. Systematic research on the content of the elderly education policy has not been reported. Therefore, a more comprehensive investigation of the content analysis of the elderly education policy in China is necessary to provide reference information for future policy formulation and adjustment.
Recently, research on relevant policies from the perspective of policy instruments has gained significant attention, particularly in the content analysis of policies [10, 11]. To date, however, there have been no studies on the content analysis of the elderly education policy from the perspective of policy instruments. The effective implementation of a policy depends on the cognition of the policy implementer, the implementation target, and the selection of scientifically sound and reasonable policy instruments [12, 13]. Educational policy instruments are a means by which policymakers can achieve educational policy objectives, and different types of policy instruments have an important impact on achieving policy objectives [14]. Consequently, 49 policies developed and issued at the national level related to the development of education for the elderly were selected based on the perspective of policy instruments. An analysis was conducted to identify the basic situation of existing elderly education policies and the allocation of policy instruments to identify problems in the configuration of policy instruments. This study aims to improve the implementation effect of the policy under the same external environment by optimizing the selection and allocation of policy instruments, which would serve as a beneficial reference for China and other similar countries worldwide in developing policies on elderly education.
2. Methodology
2.1. Sample Selection
We conducted a keyword search, “education for the aged,” on the websites of the Chinese government, including the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, China Association of Universities for the Aged, and others without specifying the starting and ending years. We selected “laws,” “outlines,” “plans,” “opinions,” “programs,” and “notices” issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the State Council, and its directly subordinated ministries and commissions. Terms such as “News reports,” “meeting minutes,” and “letters” were excluded. Meanwhile, the “Peking University Lawyer Network” reviewed and supplemented the related policies. A total of 49 policy samples issued between 1982 and 2021 were eventually selected. The details are presented in Table 1.
2.2. Framework for the Content Analysis of Elderly Education Policy Samples
The main focus of this study was the analysis of policy instruments. The analysis framework of the elderly education policy was constructed using two dimensions, “the choice of policy instruments” and “the school-running types of elderly education,” as presented in Figure 1. The content analysis method was employed to quantitatively analyze the allocation of policy instruments for the existing elderly education policy.
2.3. X Dimension: Policy Instruments
Policy instruments are the means and measures that policymakers use to achieve policy objectives and are the main contents of policy texts [15]. A policy may sometimes be identifiable in terms of a decision but often involves a series of decisions or what may be seen as more of a general orientation. Moreover, policies have tended to change over time. Policy instruments could be classified in various ways, but two of the most prevalent were (i) classifying them according to their characteristics. For example, McDonnell and Elmore divided policy instruments into command, incentive, exhortation, capacity-building, and system revolution instruments and (ii) classified policy instruments according to their effects. For instance, Rothwell and Zegveld divided policy instruments into supply-, environment-, and demand-based instruments [16–18]. The Chinese government promotes the rapid development of elderly education primarily by directly increasing the supply of resources, optimizing the environment for using resources, and encouraging social organizations and enterprises to support the initiative. These regulatory patterns perfectly conform to the classification theory of policy instruments proposed by Rothwell and Zegveld. Therefore, this study classified policy instruments into three categories based on the classification of Rothwell and Zegveld: supply-, environment-, and demand-based instruments, as the X dimension of the elderly education policy analysis. Furthermore, the special elderly education policy Development Plan for the Elderly Education (2016–2020) issued in 2016 was used as a reference to summarize the primary measures to promote the development of elderly education. In this study, supply-based instruments were classified into five policy instruments: educational investment, resource allocation, resource construction, team construction, and technical support. Environment-based instruments were subdivided into six policy instruments: policy and strategy, goal programming, standardized management, implementation guidance, incentive guidance, platform, and publicity. Demand-based instruments were subdivided into four policy instruments: industry-driven, purchase service, value-leading, and honor-driven. Table 2 lists the connotations of each type of policy instrument.
2.4. Y Dimension: The School-Running Type of Elderly Education
According to the organization’s subjects, there were five different school-running types of elderly education in China: those organized by national government departments, general universities, open universities (adult colleges and universities), communities, and social forces (enterprises, private capital, and so on). The operation modes of the different types of elderly education were relatively independent. Although many policies have been issued at the national level, their efficacy is frequently limited to one or a few types of elderly education. Evidently, when conducting policy analysis, it is necessary to conduct independent and comparative research on policies according to different types of education for the elderly. Consequently, the Y dimension of the policy content analysis included five different school-running types of elderly education: government departments, general universities, open universities, communities, and social forces.
2.5. Coding Method
The screened policy samples were sorted according to the chronological order of policy release, with the first-level code serving as the serial number. The policy instruments were coded at two to four levels according to the serial number of the text chapter [15, 19, 20]. For instance, the additional level of code could be appended to the minimum level of serial numbers to further subdivide a number of distinct fundamental analysis units; this would result in a three- to five-digit code. For example, in the “No. 37 policy text-Accelerate the Implementation of the Modernization of Education (2018–2022)”---“II. Key tasks”---“(10) Deepen the comprehensive reform of key areas of education”---“3. “Accelerate the construction of the lifelong learning system.” The serial number of the second policy instrument related to elderly education “Carry out the construction of national community education demonstration areas and demonstration schools of elderly universities” was “37-2-10-3-2.” The classification of policy instruments was based on the criterion of “containing the minimum complete intention” meaning that further subdivision of the sample would affect the expression of the true intention of the policy.
2.6. Classification of Policy Instruments
Classification of X and Y dimensions was performed for each coded policy instrument. The classification of X dimension was based on the definition of the connotation of the policy instruments in Table 2, in accordance with the real intention of the policy sample. Its classification was exclusive: a policy instrument only corresponded to one type of policy instrument; otherwise, it would have required further subdivision. The classification of Y dimension was based on text content, with reference to the title and background of the policy. The categorization of Y dimension had a situation in which one policy instrument targeted multiple school-running types of elderly education, and simultaneously, the same code was applied to multiple school-running types of elderly education for statistical types. Meanwhile, a policy instrument that did not specifically target a certain elderly education school-running type was classified as “undifferentiated” and, therefore, was excluded from the statistical scope of Y dimension analysis and X-Y cross-analysis. Finally, to ensure the accuracy of the classification of policy instruments, two doctors with expertise in educational policy analysis were invited to independently classify each policy instrument and engage in repetitive discussion regarding differences until a consensus was reached. Finally, 292 coding results and classification tables for the elderly education policy instruments were formed, as revealed in Table 3.
3. Results
3.1. The Issuance Time and Department Analysis of the Elderly Education Policy
Before 1994, only one education policy for the elderly was issued in 1982 and 1983. In the 28 years between 1994 and 2021, 47 policies related to elderly education were issued, among which no policy was issued in nine years, only one policy was issued in ten years, 2-3 policies were issued every four years, and four or more were issued in five years after 2016. In terms of the time of issuance, elderly education policies exhibited characteristics such as uncertainty in the time of policy issuance, a gradual increase from 1994, and a significant upward trend in 2016, which may be attributed to the issuance of the programmatic document on elderly education, Development Plan for Elderly Education (2016–2020), issued by the Chinese State Council in 2016. The diachronic distribution of the elderly education policy samples was determined based on the release time of the 49 policies, as illustrated in Figure 2. The subjects of developing policies on elderly education were diverse, with two laws issued by the National People’s Congress of China (Chinese legislature), 22 policies issued by the State Council of China, and 25 policies issued by Chinese ministries and commissions. Among them, up to 25 ministries and commissions were involved in the issued policies, including the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Health, and Ministry of Civil Affairs. In addition, among the 49 policy texts, two were specifically issued for elderly education, and the remaining policies were distributed across various domains, including education and aging. Notably, no policies have been issued specifically for elderly education after introducing the Development Plan of Elderly Education (2016–2020).
3.2. X Dimension: Analysis of Policy Instrument Types
As revealed in Table 4, 292 policy instruments employed in 49 elderly education policy texts were classified and counted, and the results indicated that environment-based policy instruments were the most prevalent (64.04%, 187/292), followed by supply-based policy instruments (30.14%, 88/292), and demand-based policy instruments were the least prevalent (5.82%, 17/292). It is evident that the most used policy instruments by the government were environment-based, such as “policy and strategy,” “standardized management,” or “implementation guidance,” followed by supply-based policy instruments, such as “resource construction” or “resource allocation.” The demand-based policy instruments were the least used.
Among the environment-based policy instruments, policy (18.8%, 55/292) and implementation guidance (18.5%, 54/292) instruments were used with the highest frequency, followed by incentive guidance (10.6%, 31/292), standardized management (8.9%, 26/292), goal programming (5.1%, 15/292), and platform and publicity (2.1%, 6/292) instruments. It is evident that among the environment-based policy instruments, the use frequency of “policy and strategy” and “implementation guidance” instruments is significantly higher than “goal programming” and “platform and publicity” instruments. The most frequently used supply-based policy instruments were resource allocation instruments (12.0%, 35/292), followed by resource construction (7.1%, 21/292), education investment (5.5%, 16/292), team construction (4.4%, 13/292), and technical support (1.0%, 3/292) instruments. “Resource allocation” is the most used instrument denoting more flexible and efficient use of existing resources. The utilization rate of the “education investment” instrument, which represents the investment of new resources, accounts for less than half that of the “resource allocation” instrument. Among the demand-based policy instruments, honor-driven (3.4%, 10/292) and value-leading (1.7%, 5/292) instruments were relatively more frequently used, whereas purchase service (0.3%, 1/292) and industry-driven (0.3%, 1/292) instruments were each mentioned only once in the Development Plan of Elderly Education (2016–2020), a special document on elderly education. The utilization rates of “honor-driven” and “value-leading” instruments were much higher than those of “purchase services” instruments, which may be due to the substantial fee associated with the use of the “purchase service” instrument. Figure 3 presents a comparison of various types of policy instruments.
3.3. Y Dimension: Frequency Analysis of the Use of Policy Instruments by the School-Running Type of Elderly Education
Among the 292 coding results selected, 160 did not explicitly point to the specific school-running type of elderly education, and 132 policy instruments pointed to certain or several school-running types of elderly education. According to the Y dimension classification method, 161 policy instruments were selected for five different school-running types. There were distinct differences in the distribution of policy instruments in the school-running types of elderly education. As presented in Figure 4, policy instruments for community elderly education (47%, 75/161) were the most frequently used, followed by social force elderly education (19%, 30/161), government department elderly education (14%, 23/161), general university elderly education (13%, 21/161), and open university elderly education (7%, 12/161). Evidently, the largest number of policies pertains to community elderly education, accounting for nearly half of all policy instruments prioritized by the government.
3.4. X-Y Dimension: Analysis of Policy Instruments Allocation of Different School-Running Types of Elderly Education
The policy instruments that exhibited distinct directions in the Y dimension were further added to the X dimension for cross-analysis, and the results are revealed in Tables 5 and 6. The proportion of the same type of policy instruments selected across different school-running types of elderly education was quite different. Supply-based policy instruments were allocated more heavily to open university elderly education (50.0%, 6/12), general university elderly education (47.6%, 10/21), and community elderly education (41.3%, 31/75), which was significantly higher than the overall level (34.8%, 56/161). Moreover, it was the least allocated in social force elderly education (10.0%, 3/30), accounting for less than one-third of the overall level. Notably, among the types of supply-based policy instruments, elderly education in general and open universities predominantly used the “resource allocation” instrument rather than the “education investment” instrument. The above data analysis further demonstrates that the “supply-based” instrument, which symbolizes new resource input, is mainly used in community elderly education, whereas the other school-running type of elderly education predominantly utilizes the “resource allocation” instruments.
The proportion of environment-based instruments used in different types was social force (86.7%, 26/30), government department (65.2%, 15/23), community (52.0%, 39/75), general university (52.4%, 11/21), and open university (41.7%, 5/12) elderly education. Among these, the selection of environment-based instruments by social force elderly education was significantly higher than the overall level (59.6%, 96/161), whereas open university elderly education was significantly lower than the overall level. The demand-based instruments were selected in a relatively high proportion in government departments (2/23, 8.7%) and open university (1/12, 8.3%) elderly education types. In contrast, demand-based instruments were selected relatively less in general university (0/21, 0%) and social forces’ (1/30, 3.3%) elderly education.
4. Discussion
From a comprehensive perspective, out of the 49 samples of elderly education policies examined, only two have been issued exclusively focusing on elderly education, while the remaining policies were mainly dispersed throughout the elderly population policy, education policy, and other related policies. In addition, most texts were expressed in general terms, lacking sufficient specificity and detail. Policy introduction was not periodically organized from the past to the future and lacked systematic organization from the total to the sub in the contents. Second, the subject of policy implementation was unclear, and the expression of the policy text tended toward a macro level. The policy texts extensively involved subjects such as education, culture, health, grassroot governments, and universities. However, the description of the policy implementation department was obscure, and the leading position of the education department was not prominent.
From the perspective of policy instruments, the main manifestations included the insufficient use of supply-based policy instruments (30.14%, 88/292), excessive use of environment-based policy instruments (64.04%, 187/292), and a serious shortage of demand-based policy instruments (5.82%, 17/292). According to the conclusion presented in the official government document, the primary challenges in China’s elderly education are an insufficient supply of resources and regional development imbalances. In addition, there is an imbalance in using specific policy instruments within the same type of policy instruments. Among supply-based instruments, the “education investment” instrument is rarely used, especially in rural communities with poor infrastructure, rendering satisfactory outcomes elusive. Honor-driven and value-leading instruments comprised most demand-based instruments, whereas purchase services- and industry-driven instruments were relatively few. They were deficient in material incentives and weak in guiding social forces, especially private enterprises, to participate in the education of the elderly.
From the perspective of the school-running type of elderly education, policy instruments (47%, 75/161) for community elderly education were the most prevalent, and the “hard supply” instruments, such as “education investment” in supply-based policy instruments, were mainly used in the community elderly education type. In contrast, other types were mainly used in “soft supply” instruments such as “resource allocation.” This is consistent with the current situation of the development of elderly education in China because the scale of expansion space of universities for the elderly organized by government departments and universities is limited, and social forces can only serve as a supplement. Compared to other school-running types of elderly education, it was not the responsibility of general universities and social forces to organize elderly education, and their inclination to participate was relatively low, rendering demand-based instruments indispensable for enhancing their enthusiasm to participate in elderly education.
5. Conclusions
This study performed a systematic content analysis of elderly education policies in China from the perspective of policy instruments. The basic situation of China’s elderly education policy and the allocation of policy instruments over the past four decades have been elucidated for the first time. The results of this study provide a useful reference for the formulation of elderly education in China and other countries that are also facing the same dilemma. The recommended policies are as follows.
First, we expedited the introduction of new programmatic documents and supported policies for elderly education. The new policy should delineate the development plan for elderly education while establishing the main body, management organization and procedures, and types of elderly education. Moreover, it should specify the expected magnitudes, forms, and levels of elderly education at different stages of development to accommodate the needs of different elderly people. According to the above mentioned programmatic documents, local governments and relevant departments should develop specific implementation programs and support policies to form a perfect education policy system for the elderly.
Second, the allocation of policy instruments should be adjusted according to the developmental stage of elderly education. It is recommended to increase the selection of supply-based policy instruments to ensure instrument supply for elderly education resources, especially to increase the proportion of supply-based policy instruments such as capital investment and facility construction. Environmental- and demand-based policies can only be effectively implemented with sufficient resource supply. It is recommended to reduce environmental instruments that represent commands such as “guidelines and policies” and “standardized management” and instead choose platforms and publicity instruments that promote the exchange of resources and experiences among different regions and school-running types. Another effective method would be to increase the number of demand-based policy instruments. Specifically, policy instruments such as “purchase service” and “honor-driven” are used to enhance the enthusiasm of the organizers of elderly education.
Third, while the use of policy instruments is generally consistent for different types of education for the elderly, some incompatibilities exist. Universities and social forces have increased the use of demand-based policy instruments in elderly education policies. Demand-based policy instruments should be allocated to attract more social forces with resources and the ability to engage in elderly education through the government purchase of services and the development of elderly-related industries.
However, despite its originality, the limitation of this study is that the policy sample is limited to the national level, which fails to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the elderly education policies introduced by local governments, resulting in insufficient specific and targeted policy recommendations. Furthermore, this study only analyzed the situation of the policy instruments contained in the policy content and did not consider the actual effect of policy implementation.
Data Availability
The data used to support the findings of this study are included within the article.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Authors’ Contributions
Weidong Wang conceptualized the study and wrote, reviewed, and edited the article. Mochang Qiu proposed the methodology and performed analysis. Mochang Qiu prepared the original draft. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. The authors thank Zijin Xu and Ziqi Cai for their comments on the previous versions of this article. Any remaining errors or inaccuracies are exclusively the authors’ responsibility.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge financial support from the Key Project of Guangzhou Educational Science Planning (No. 202113536), the Jiangxi Provincial University Humanities and Social Science Research Project (JY2312), and the Guangzhou Philosophy and Social Science Project (No. 2019GZYB85).