Study on Factors Impacting the Development
of Vocational Education in China
Chich-Jen Shieh
I-Ming Wang
Yung-Sheng Yang
Chang-Jung Christian University
1. Introduction
Vocational education is a very important part of the life-long learning education system rather than the end of education in China (Guo, 2000). It can respond to the demand of development of human resources. Without the development of vocational education, it is impossible for China to achieve sustainable modernization. In recent years, a strange phenomenon took place in China’s education field. Even though employment pressure for college graduates is increasing year by year, there were still 8.76 million higher school graduates that attended the annual college entrance examination of 2005, and only around half of them were lucky enough to pass the examination. On the other hand, vocational schools are facing the insufficient student source while the demand of the society on well-trained technicians has never stopped. Wu (2002) stated after that China’s entry into WTO, the education market in China became like a huge piece of cake, which was coveted by more foreign multinational corporations and educational agencies.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Brief View of China’s Vocational Educational System
According to the Vocational Law (1996) of the People’s Republic of China, vocational education is an important part of the country’s education program, and a significant means to accelerate the development of economy and society while enhancing labor employment. Huang (2005) reported that for the past 20 years since the reform and open-up, vocational schools have helped the nation nourish about 50 million graduates, and the number of labors in rural or urban areas who have received various kinds of training even reaches the level of 1.3 billion. According to the latest statistics of Ministry of Labor and Social Security, in 2004, there were 8,800,000 participated the vocational skills assessment, of which, 7,360,000 obtained various levels of vocational certificates.
Xiao and Lo (2003) stated that firms and workers in Shanghai, the biggest economic center of China, have used continuing education as a major vehicle for compensating for the limitations of formal education and for the improvement of the quality of the workforce. The development of China’s vocational education strengthens the education structure. It also enhances the quality of new labors in rural or urban areas and current employees, including their ability to obtain employment or to adjust them in the workplace. This has satisfied the demands of economic construction for various kinds of skilled and high quality laborers. Social and economic development can therefore be progressing more rapidly.
2.2 Problems and Causes Existing in Current China’s Vocational Education
Although China has created an unprecedented and immense achievement in its economy after the reform and open-up, she is still a developing country. China is staying in the mid-period of industrialization in terms of whole productivity, suffering the problem of polarization between rural and urban areas, and also facing a lack of successors to highly skilled workers due to the senile age structure and especially the outdated structures of expertise and technical skills (Yang, 2002).
China is rich in labor population, but human resources have not been fully developed. Though many vocational and technical education schools have been set up, they only meet the needs of previous planned economy but not those of current market economy. (Luo, 2002) Therefore, abundant labor forces have not yet been turned to the competitive edge of human capital. This is a very important factor that could impact China’s economy. Hence, the development direction with the focus on vocational education completely corresponds with the needs of China’s economic development. Thus, a very huge space for development in China’s vocational education can be expected.
However, China is now still a poor country managing its education for so large a population. With limited education budget, the strategic choice on the educational structure makes the government only able to maintain the obligatory and primary education, and develop higher education positively and steadily. In this respect, there is not much devotion to vocational education and adult education. Meanwhile, with the higher living state than before, more people can look for higher level of education. Recruitment expansion of general higher education since 1999 also makes the student source for vocational education compressed relatively.
3. Quantitative Analysis
As discussed above, the following approaches were set up first in the study for further analysis. Problems Confronted with Current Development, the independent variable, was assorted into three dimensions such as Advance to Higher Schools and Employment, School Management, and Policy Block. Oncoming Trend, the dependent variable, was assorted into two dimensions such as Government, and School. Education Policy, the adjustment variable, was assorted into two dimensions such as Structure Reform, and Policy Formulation. Major objectives for the study were to discuss the correlations among the three dimensions of Problems Confronted with Current Development, the two dimensions of Oncoming Trend, and the two dimensions of Education Policy. Moreover, the adjustment effect of Education Policy on the correlation between Problems Confronted with Current Development and Oncoming Trend was further discussed. In this study, samples were chosen by way of convenience for sampling. The Education Bureau of Shanghai City Government, school administrative personnel and business owners in Shanghai region, the economic and commercial center of China, which were taken as samples, were responsible for filling questions about Problems Confronted With Current Development, Oncoming Trend and Education Policy, in 800 questionnaires sent out. However, 736 questionnaires were reclaimed. Every answer in the questionnaire reclaimed could represent the valid sample for the three variables that the workers related to vocational education in Shanghai region acknowledged. Therefore, it conformed to the tenor of research for the development of vocational education in China.
Data is not shown, but findings are introduced through Pearson’s correlation analysis and multi-regression analysis. Except School Management Dimension, the rest two dimensions of Problems Confronted with Current Development are in positive correlation with Oncoming Trend. Except Advance to Higher Schools and Employment Dimension, the rest two dimensions of Problems Confronted with Current Development are in positive correlation with Education Policy. Besides, the result from Pearson’s correlation analysis also reveals there is a positive correlation existing between Education Policy and Oncoming Trend.
Either Structure Reform Dimension or Policy Formulation Dimension can enhance the positive correlation of School Management Dimension with School Dimension and Government Dimension, separately. Structure Reform Dimension can enhance the positive correlation between Government Dimension and Advance to Higher Schools and Employment Dimension. And, Policy Formulation Dimension can enhance the positive correlation between Policy Block dimension and Government Dimension.
4. Discussion
4.1 Low Status of Vocational Education in the Society of China
The traditional concept to look down on vocational education is still yielding its impact on various sectors in the society, even including the education sector. People in China used to regard general higher education as the “formal education”, and vocational education as an informal and low-level education. Many students and parents think that vocational education is “the second-level education” and general education is “first-level education”. They think that vocational education is just a subsidiary of the general education system. Vocational education will be taken into account only when they do not have other choices. Doyle and Feldman (2006) stated that students chose schools based on perceived fits of specific academics, support, and school culture characteristics. Hoffman, Jackson and Smith (2005) stated that due to social and family pressure against atypical career aspirations, students express internal conflict about whether to continue to work toward their goals, or submit to social pressure. Vocational education in China is commonly regarded as the inferior choice. Only students who can not attend general high schools or universities will choose vocational schools. Thus, only less students with good performance in schools would like to join the vocational education examination on one hand, and thus the quality of the student source for vocational education is relatively poor. On the other hand, students of vocational schools usually look down on and abase themselves. All these are definitely not good for the development of vocational education and the cultivation of talents. Zhou and Tao (2002) stated it is easy to find 100 college graduates, but it is rather difficult to find 100 high-level skilled workers in China.”
4.2 Mistaken Evaluation for Skilled Talents
During the period of planned economy, the criteria to choose a talent were not the ability but the political and vocational situation of his parents. When China follows the threads of market economy, educational background has become more important for employment and promotion. In recent years, this trend has gone to another extreme which is “diploma is everything”. This has marginalized skilled workers who have to accumulate skills and experiences in the front-line, and made many skilled talents not able to obtain social status and corresponding return they deserve. (Peng, 2002) Since the reform and open-up, the economy has been skyrocketing. There are more and more demands for high-tech talents, yet not enough talents available. One of the reasons is that the society has a mistaken evaluation on high-tech talents. This kind of evaluation makes skilled workers not able to obtain their social status, and also caused a relatively poor return. There is an obvious discrepancy between the status, identity or wages of skilled talents and those of official clerks. This result has given rise to the shortage of skilled talent resources and the structural imbalance of human resources. Obviously when people are not interested in vocational education, it will be further marginalized. This is the direct reason why the whole attraction of vocational education has been unceasingly descending in the society.
4.3 Out-dated Concept on Talents
Cooper (2002) stated that what program components may enhance our effectiveness in promoting education access for all skilled workers? There are five bridges along skilled workers’ pathways to education: family involvement, culturally enriched teaching, counseling, mentoring, and peers. The unsound and unreasonable mechanisms for both personnel-management and distribution make it impossible for skilled workers to enjoy the relative social status they deserve. China’s higher education has long been dominated by meritocracy. After the reform and open-up, the market economy and the knowledge economy have been prospering. People start to look for talent with capability of management and new and high-level skills, and they only recognize this kind of talent. People look down on low-diploma skilled workers who have long worked in the first-line of production, and thus vocational education is greatly underestimated.
This kind of outdated concept on talents has brought serious results. With regard to the criteria of recruitment and selection, many organizations emphasize the diploma rather than the capability, which raises the threshold for employment with biases. For example, the qualification of a shoe polisher in its wanted advertisements is the diploma of the secondary junior college; for babysitter wanted advertisements, they are looking for junior college graduates, whereas for food products sales, applicants need to be college graduates with food science major. Feng and Zhang (2004) reported that the population in China is huge, and thus a stringent domicile system is implemented to control the population flow and distribution. In cities especially, no registration of immigration and residence is allowed without the regular qualification. Without the official permission of residence, schooling or job hunting will be very limited. The qualification for residence permission in many cities is that applicants are required to be at least college graduate with bachelor’s degree. This makes undoubtedly it more difficult for vocational education to develop and be expected. (Chinese Academy of Social Science, 2004)
4.4 Unsound Labor Personnel Management System and Unreasonable Resource Distribution
The labor personnel management system built in the period of planned economy is still in use which looks down on skills, and emphasizes ranks. The essence of the system is to completely separate workers from staffs (usually technical personnel included) in terms of the management system. In this framework, staffs are regarded as talents whereas workers are just ordinary labors. Moreover, most of high-leveled skilled talents (like high-leveled technical workers, technicians) are categorized in the rank of workers; for example, technicians are called worker technicians in business/organization so as to be clearly differentiated from technical personnel and engineers of the technical staff. Although the system is under reform now, the influences still can be beyond imagination in depth and in width. (Ding, 2004) It is quite sure that this is the origin of mistaken assessment on high-skilled workers in the society.
In the official educational programming, the development target of vocational education is to cultivate high-quality labors, and both primary and secondary level of talents, whereas the development target of higher education is to cultivate high-level innovative talents. In governmental institutions and state-run organizations/units, those who have at least secondary-level of diploma are considered staffs while those who graduate from vocational education are considered workers. This kind of personnel management system only focuses on the diploma rather than techniques. Therefore, the social status and the treatment for skilled workers in enterprises are much inferior to those for governmental officials and management staffs. The long- term ignorance on interests of skilled workers makes it difficult for them to feel the sense of satisfaction, which seriously hurts their motivation to upgrade their skills. The government authorities always advocate developing vocational education actively when programming educational system, but, in reality, during some periods of time or phases, many local education authorities will put more emphasis on and distribute more resources to the fields rather than vocational education when encountering tangible issues, such as budget or others. (Wong, 2004). At present, there are 140 million vocational workers in China, and skilled workers account for 70,000,000. In terms of skilled workers, junior-skilled workers account for 60%, middle-skilled workers for 35%, and high-level skilled workers for only 3.5%. (Bei, 2002) The technical contribution of skilled workers in enterprises is underestimated. In the skill assessment system, what is important is the innovation, but not the transformation from innovation to productivity. As long as this kind of system still exists, it is impossible for vocational education aiming at the target of cultivation of skilled talents to be resumed to its proper position, and also impossible to change or remove the traditional concepts discriminating vocational education. Furthermore, the fact of low utilization of China’s science and technology achievements on real production will not be able to be improved.
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
In recent years, with regard to researches analyzing difficulties and problems China’s vocational education encountered, the conceptual factors influencing the development of vocational education were seldom studied. The author thinks that it is a flaw, and thus the paper was focused on this for study.
The goal for education is to safeguard its cultural values. Traditional concepts should be passed down, but can not become a burden.The correct attitude is to “extract the best, and abandon the worst”. In China, traditional concepts like the discrimination against skilled workers and vocational education, the imbalance between educational and social development, and education for a governmental position should be completely changed.
During the process of vocational education development, reforms of both the system and traditional concepts are equally important. Under the market economy, the system of human resource management and development should be based on vocations and job positions. The system should be linked with the human resource market and the management system focusing on capability development of employees. Therefore, it is also necessary to eliminate the mistaken assessment for talents, and the traditional concepts discriminating vocational education and skilled talents so that vocational education can have room for further development.
International friends who are interested in investing on China’s vocational education should be advised to understand not only the policies and administration laws, but the culture, history and traditional concepts of China. Only when they understand the thinking, values, cultural traditions, the reasons why vocational education should continue to develop, and the influences brought by traditional concepts can they have a more thorough comprehension of China’s education that can serve as a reliable basis for their investments in China.
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