The cadre cram school of Dalian Institute of Technology, which was the predecessor of the School of Distance and Continuing Education of Dalian University of Technology, opened in 1952. The school successively accepted a large number of industrial and agricultural cadres sent by the Northeast, Central South Military Region and the Northwest to study at the school; In 1956, in order to meet the strong demand for talents for economic and social development after the founding of New China, the school established the evening college with the approval of the Central Ministry of Higher Education and became one of the first universities in our country to hold evening college education; In 1980, the enrollment of evening college was resumed; In 1985, the correspondence college was approved to open; In 1988, the department of evening college and the department of correspondence college merged to form the adult education department of Dalian University of Technology; In 1991, the university established the School of Adult education on the basis of the department of adult education; In September 1995, the university established the School of Continuing Education, co-located with the school of adult Education. In February 2002, with the approval of the Ministry of Education, Dalian University of Technology became one of the 68 modern distance education pilot universities nationwide. In the same year, Dalian University of Technology established the School of Online Education to plan, centrally manage and actually operate modern distance education throughout the university. In January 2005, the university merged the School of Continuing Education, the School of Online Education, and the School of Adult Education to form the new School of Continuing Education of Dalian University of Technology to carry out non-academic continuing education, adult higher education, and online higher education. In November 2012, the school was renamed the School of Distance and Continuing Education.

The school is located in the city campus of Dalian University of Technology at the beginning of its establishment. The campus has a beautiful environment, profound cultural heritage, classic and modern. The school adheres to the DUT spirit of "being open to all rivers, constant self-improvement, virtuous learning, and unity of knowledge and action" as the main characteristics and the excellent style of study of "diligence, rigor, truth-seeking, and innovation". The guiding ideology is to standardize management, improve quality, highlight characteristics, and create a brand to inherit the excellent educational tradition and culture of Dalian University of Technology. Relying on excellent educational resources inside and outside the university, with the help of modern educational technology, the school provides multi-level and high-quality educational services to the society in the national lifelong education system, and has formed a brand of education and non-academic continuing education with the characteristics of Dalian University of Technology .

The school highlights the DUT’s distinct school-running characteristics, strengthens the professional setting of engineering, and offers 9 majors in civil engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, water conservancy, marine engineering, computer, management science and engineering, business management, and public management. Among them, there are 15 majors at the undergraduate level and 4 majors at the junior college level. A standardized, pragmatic and efficient quality assurance system for faculty cultivation has been formed in teaching management, team building, course building, practice links, and learning center building. Nearly 300 off-campus learning centers approved to be established are distributed in 29 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country. As of March 2021, there are more than 100,000 students in school. After years of development, the school has won "China's Top Ten Brand Online Education School", "China Modern Distance Education Special Contribution Award for Lifelong Education", "2019 China's Most Socially Influential College Online and Continuing Education School", and 2020 China Internet Education "Closed Classes" "Non-stop school" has made outstanding contributions to colleges and universities and many other honors, and teaching achievements have also won many national and provincial awards.

The brand awareness of non academic training of the school has been preliminarily established, and a number of high-quality training projects have been created. The pattern of academic education and non academic education flying together has gradually emerged. In recent years, our training center has cooperated with nearly 100 domestic enterprises and institutions to carry out multi-level and multi-field training and education. The annual training programs cover party and government organs cadre training, innovation management training, enterprise customized technical training, and teacher education Training, professional and technical personnel knowledge update training, professional courses remote training, etc., have won wide acclaim from the society and established the training brand of Dalian University of Technology. At present, our institute has become the "National Continuing Education Base for Professional and Technical Personnel" of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the "National Intellectual Property Training Base" of the State Intellectual Property Office, the "High-level Talent Training Base" of the Organization Department of the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee, and Qinghai Province Committee Organization Department "Training Base for Secretaries of Primary Party Organizations in Qinghai Province", etc.

As time goes by, all the teachers of the school will realize the high-quality development of continuing education, build the domestic first-class continuing education, and contribute to the construction of an education system that serves the life-long learning of the whole people and the construction of a learning society.

(Data as of April 2021)