In 2008, of the full-time teachers, 209 had doctor's degrees, 4,990 had master's degrees, 42,608 had undergraduate education, and 2,795 had diploma education or below, accounting for 0.41 percent, 9.87 percent, 84.20 percent and 5.52 percent of the total full-time teachers respectively. Compared with the numbers of 2007, full-time teachers with undergraduate education or above increased, especially the number of teachers with master's degree, while the number and proportion of those teachers with diploma education or below relatively decreased.

In 2008, the full-time teaching staff calculated in 11 disciplines included 6,219 in economics, 3,894 in law, 4,625 in pedagogy, 11,291 in literature (including 4,382 in foreign languages), 3,304 in philosophy and history, 5,842 in science, 10,815 in engineering (including 5,108 in computer), 611 in agronomy (including 111 in forestry), 970 in medicine, and 3,031 in management.

In 2008, the age structure of the full-time teachers was: 12,400 at or below 30, accounting for 24.52 percent, 20,200 between 31 and 40, accounting for 39.82 percent; 13,400 between 41 and 50, accounting for 26.48 percent, 4,500 between 51 and 60, accounting 8.94 percent, and 100 at or above 61, accounting for 0.24 percent. Most of them were young and middle-aged teachers.

Ⅳ. The Assets and College Buildings

In 2008, the fixed assets with property rights of the open universities in China valued 20.16 billion yuan, including 5.204 billion yuan of instrument and equipment for teaching and research; there were 44,697,800 copies of books, 22,948,800 copies of e-books, 282,100 computers for teaching, 71,500 seats for language labs, and 460,400 seats for multimedia labs.

The fixed assets without the property rights valued 5.5 billion yuan, with 0.942 billion yuan of the assets being used independently, and 4.558 billion yuan of them being shared. In 2008, the total construction area of college buildings with property rights was 18,191,000 square meters, including 8,495,600 square meters for teaching and support use, 1,990,200 square meters for administrative offices, and 5,786,000 square meters for living.

The total construction areas of the college buildings without property rights amounted to 5,177,100 square meters, of which 1,092,300 square meters were used exclusively by the open universities around the country and 4,084,800 square meters were shared.