We were the 2nd batch of student attend Social Enterprise Visiting on Aug.1, 2010. We visited Shanghai University for the Elderly. The campus is located at Luwan District, Shanghai. We are very interesting in this university. It arose our curiosity to know how old people study, how this school operates.

　　The first impression to me is that there are so many students’ art works hanging along the corridors of each floor. It is a fresh and cooling culture breezed in this hot summer.

　　Dean Mr. Jiang and other 3 seniors warmly welcomed us, they are as olde as our grandparents.

　　Mr. Jiang introduced this university to us. The objective of the school is to improve the quality of living for the elderly. The university is aiming at fulfilling the social needs and the study dreams for the elderly people, which is much different with normal educational colleges

　　We really admired and respected the faculties of the university. They are also the retired people and contribute themselves to wholeheartedly serve the senior citizens.

　　The philosophy of the university is to coordinate the development of 3 types of ‘classrooms’ . They are: the classroom in the campus, the associations and distance education. After 25 years development, The school has 9 departments, offering 101 courses. It is the great achievement for this special university

　　Mr. Jiang also introduced us the operation of school. The main financial resource is mainly from government appropriation. The government fund is increased from the 300KRMB/yr at beginning to 3MRMB now. However, It still cannot meet the current developing requirement.

　　After introduction, we had many questions. We wondered that whether the Social enterpise concept is suitable and implementing in the school. Mr. Jiang replyed that they never intend to get back the profits from these silver hair students. The faculties have deep feelings for their students and they well understand the sufferings the elderly people may have before.Therefore, how to get enough resources to support the school became a main topic between us.

　　It is our consus that only government appropriation is not enough. The school may need to seek more social resources. It not only for financial resouces but also human resource.

　　It is actually what the faculties doing now. They are contacting charity fundation under the help from government. It is the positive way to acquire the fund without increase the burden of their students.

　　What is more, we felt a little pity that most of the teachers are retired people. Where is the younger teacher? Is this university isolated by main stream society? From the school, they may can looking for community volunteers. It will be the way to extened human resource. From us, the main stream working force. Do we rethink about these social responsiablities in this unchecked materialism-orientated society?