The purpose of vocational education is to train skilled workers and technicians, while the purpose of normal education is to train teachers. But most of the teachers trained in vocational schools are kindergarten teachers.

Compared with ordinary higher education that trains academic talents, higher vocational education focuses on training advanced technical applied talents. The higher vocational education in Chinese mainland is mainly at the junior college level. With the approval of the Ministry of Education in People's Republic of China (PRC) (China), some national model higher vocational colleges have started to offer four-year undergraduate education. Higher vocational education in Taiwan Province Province has now risen to the level of doctoral students. When higher vocational students graduate, they get college or undergraduate diplomas recognized by the state and enjoy all the treatment of ordinary college graduates.

According to the relevant regulations of the Ministry of Education, from the end of last century, full-time colleges and universities with non-normal, non-medical and non-public security majors should gradually standardize their school name suffixes as "vocational and technical college" or "vocational college", and full-time colleges and universities with normal, medical and public security majors should standardize their school name suffixes as "college". "Vocational and Technical College" or "Vocational College" is a unique suffix of higher vocational colleges and an important part of higher education in China.