It is about China 1200 national colleges and universities, of which more than 600 will turn to vocational education to train skilled talents. In fact, the author has heard this news for several months, but it has been brewing for many years in the discussion circle of experts in the field of vocational education.
The introduction of such a policy background is based on two bottlenecks in China's development.
On the one hand, with the development of China's manufacturing industry in the direction of high-end or more sophisticated, at the same time, this development trend has seriously troubled the lack of relevant technical personnel. And these precision manufacturing technical talents often need to be shaped through long-term strict vocational education combined with practical work. On the other hand, graduates who receive general education in ordinary colleges and universities in China face great employment pressure when looking for a job because they have not received special vocational education before graduation. The embarrassing situation of the shortage of talents in special vocational education and the over-training of ordinary college graduates has plagued the development of China, which is no longer a matter of recent years. If China wants to change from a manufacturing power to a manufacturing power in the future, this reform cannot be bypassed.
China's vocational education reform has largely referred to the German system. In academic circles, many professional experts on youth employment believe that in the long-term world economic depression after the financial crisis, Germany can well control the unemployment rate, especially in the youth unemployment rate, mainly relying on the dividend of German "dual system" vocational education.
I don't want to discuss some macro descriptions of German vocational education that can be found on the Internet in this article, but I hope to provide some ideas for these families from the perspective of every family with school-age students and the German view of vocational education.
The first question to answer is, why do 50% of German school-age young people want to carry out vocational education and training instead of choosing universities?
Because studying in Germany doesn't require as expensive tuition as in the United States and Britain, but young people who choose to study in universities don't have to bear huge student loans like young people in the United States and Britain. However, young people who choose to go to college still have to basically solve their own living and renting expenses. More importantly, universities have a long academic system and high curriculum requirements, and almost 25% of young people who enter universities every year will not be able to complete their studies. Even if they graduate successfully, they must face the job market independently. Students majoring in law and medicine have to pass a very difficult national examination to find a suitable position, while other majors often need several rounds of unstable internships to accumulate enough work experience capital to obtain long-term formal employment contracts with their peers. After this long process, it is not easy to find a job that you are satisfied with, and the competition is fierce.
Compared with college students, young people engaged in vocational training can basically be recommended and directly enter employment as long as they can successfully pass various examinations of vocational training. Compared with people of the same age who go to college, the risk of obtaining stable employment opportunities in the end will be much smaller and the length of the vocational training system will be much shorter. According to the latest sampling research results of German Job Market and Vocational Research Center, people who have completed vocational training and obtained corresponding vocational certificates can earn an average of 6,543.8+0.32 million euros before retiring at the age of 65. If they have completed higher vocational education (that is, this time ordinary colleges and universities are transformed into vocational education at a similar age), they can earn an average of more than 2 million euros before retirement, while those who have obtained a bachelor's degree or above can earn about 2.32 million euros. It can be seen that there is an average income gap between higher vocational education and general higher education in Germany throughout their careers, but the scope of the gap is not very large. In such a social environment, young people can choose their own future according to their attitude towards life. They can learn their skills as an important part of society and serve the society with their own strength in order to obtain fair income and comfort. Of course, young people who love adventure and are willing to become the engine of this society can also choose more challenging ordinary higher education and gain a relatively higher income level or social role through competition.
In China, the average income gap between these two groups is still relatively large. But the bigger problem is the difference in acceptance and social status. Due to long-term historical reasons, higher vocational education is not regarded as a parallel system with ordinary higher education. But to distinguish the two groups purely by the difference of scores, which also leads to the long-term inequality of social status between the two social groups. However, with the deepening of this reform and the increase in the income of senior technicians in the future, there is also the formulation and introduction of the future level system for technicians. This problem will definitely be reversed, because a very simple truth is that if we want to talk about the Chinese dream, the prerequisite is that China can become a manufacturing power, and the manufacturing power depends on our advanced technical backbone, and those skilled people and their own specialties will certainly be respected by society. For this, parents with school-age children in China can rest assured.
What our parents and children should really pay attention to is that if they feel that they want to choose vocational education, they must keep their eyes open and choose good schools and higher vocational majors. By taking advantage of the dual system in Germany, the author provides two indicators for families with such needs.
1. It depends on the degree of cooperation between schools and well-known enterprises and the strength of teachers. The core of dual vocational education in Germany is the joint training between schools and enterprises. German students spend at least 50% of their vocational education time in the cooperative enterprises of the school. Moreover, it is not the professors who emphasize theory, but the technical backbones with good attitude, teaching methods and long-term frontline who teach them how to do real technical work. This relationship also determines that most of the higher vocational education system will be directly absorbed by cooperative enterprises after graduation. Parents and children in China must keep their eyes open when choosing higher vocational education schools. Among these 600 schools in transition, there must be a mixture of cooperation with enterprises and teachers.
2.
It depends on the major and the future employment industry. The development of manufacturing industry in China is obviously changing from manpower-intensive to technology-intensive. Moreover, China will gradually distribute labor-intensive industries to other countries with lower labor costs in Asia and Africa in the future. Therefore, parents and children must find out their children's future employment direction when filling in higher vocational colleges and majors.
Can be said to be a great time for China's generation of young people. On the one hand, China realized the importance of vocational education to the national development structure and employment earlier than the United States and Britain. On the other hand, if the reform goes smoothly, with the upgrading of China's manufacturing industry, the demand for technical talents is increasing, and higher vocational education can continuously supply qualified technical talents to meet the demand. This generation of young people can also get more dividends from the development of China countries, forming a virtuous circle.
In order to make this virtuous circle really work, there is still a lot of work to be done at the national and social levels. According to China's national conditions, the first is to open up the honor channel system from junior technicians to senior technicians. Social identity and sense of honor are the cultural foundation accumulated by our China society for thousands of years. The second is to establish several demonstrative higher vocational education institutions for technical talents, and at the same time actively eliminate those institutions with poor employment quality (rather than simple employment rate), poor social evaluation and unqualified teacher evaluation.
On the other hand, the country and society are also worth learning from Germany. Another important reason why German vocational education is so successful is that there are many research institutions and committees behind this system, which make long-term analysis and forecast the future trend of vocational education in different industries. These studies can play an invisible role in regulating the employment relationship between completely free enterprises and students, thus playing a great guiding role in optimizing the allocation of young people to each industry and enterprise as much as possible after completing vocational education. This can not only effectively solve the possible surplus of personnel in some industries or in the future, but also minimize the shortage of personnel in some industries.