10%, this data marks that China's vocational undergraduate education has finally "landed" after years of exploration and practice, and has reached the specific implementation stage.
"10%", this data comes from the "Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of Modern Vocational Education" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions") recently issued by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council. The "Opinions" clearly put forward: in 2025, the target task of "the enrollment scale of vocational undergraduate education is not less than 10% of the enrollment scale of higher vocational education".
According to the 2020 National Education Development Statistical Communiqué, in 2020, the national higher vocational (specialty) enrollment is 5.2434 million people, if this enrollment scale is maintained every year, it means that after 2025, vocational undergraduate schools will enroll more than 500,000 people per year.
The future is here. Up to now, the Ministry of Education has approved 34 schools to carry out vocational undergraduate pilots, which provides a powerful reference and model for exploring the development of vocational undergraduate education in China.
How to promote the development of vocational undergraduate education? Recently, at the seminar on improving the quality of vocational undergraduate education undertaken by Nanjing University of Technology and Technology, Lin Yu, deputy director of the Department of Vocational Education of the Ministry of Education, pointed out that the current vocational undergraduate education is in the critical stage of its infancy, and the Ministry of Education will further strengthen the classification guidance of vocational undergraduates. Adhere to steady development, to avoid "large and complete", set standards according to comparison, around the characteristics of the school, mature one set one by one. Adhere to the integration of industry and education, school-enterprise cooperation, adhere to the quality as the core, the development of high-quality vocational undergraduate education, for the community to hand over a satisfactory answer sheet.
Why?
"Vocational undergraduate education is a new thing in China's educational reform." Zeng Tianshan, deputy director of the Research Institute of the Vocational and Technical Education Center of the Ministry of Education, said frankly that vocational undergraduate education lacks ready-made theories and experiences to learn from, and faces many challenges.
In 2014, the State Council issued the "Decision on Accelerating the Development of Modern Vocational Education" for the first time to "explore the development of undergraduate-level vocational education"; in 2019, the State Council issued the "National Vocational Education Reform Implementation Plan" and again proposed to "carry out undergraduate-level vocational education pilots"; the "Opinions" also clearly stated that in 2025, the target task of "vocational undergraduate education enrollment scale is not less than 10% of the enrollment scale of higher vocational education".
"From an international point of view, the vocational undergraduate education in my Chinese has a corresponding main body in many Western countries, and has become an important form of vocational education in most developed countries." Zeng Tianshan introduced that at present, Germany, the United States and other countries have developed different forms of vocational undergraduate education, forming some basic school running experience.
"The development of vocational education undergraduates is not only an urgent need to respond to industrial transformation and upgrading to promote high-quality economic development, but also an objective need to meet the people's desire to achieve higher quality and fuller employment; it is not only an inherent requirement for accelerating the structural adjustment of higher education and building a high-quality education system, but also an important part of improving the modern vocational education system with Chinese characteristics." Zeng Tianshan summed up why vocational undergraduate education was developed.
In the view of Wu Xuemin, secretary of the Party Committee of Nanjing University of Technology and Technology, the first school in China to be converted from a public higher vocational school to a vocational undergraduate school, the demand for technical skills in the current and future industrial development needs to be adjusted in the structure of higher education.
According to the "Guidelines for the Development of Manufacturing Talents" issued by the Ministry of Education and other 3 parts in February 2017, it is predicted that by 2025, the talent demand gap in the ten key areas of the manufacturing industry will further expand to about 30 million people; relevant surveys also show that 73.8% of enterprises reflect "lack of technical talents", and the lack of high-end technical skills has become an important shortcoming and constraint to promote the industrial structure to the middle and high-end.
"The development of vocational undergraduate education, in essence, is the historical necessity of deepening the structural reform of the supply side of vocational education, which will further optimize the hierarchy of higher education, meet the actual needs of industrial transformation and upgrading, and the quality needs of front-line talents, and provide strong intellectual support for industrial transformation and upgrading by accelerating the construction of a knowledge-based, skilled, and innovative labor force." Wu Xuemin said.
Who's going to do it?
Since 2012, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Shandong and other provinces have supported vocational colleges and undergraduate schools to carry out the "4+0" training (all four years in higher vocational colleges and universities) vocational education undergraduate pilots characterized by "relying on high-quality resources of higher vocational education, joint undergraduate holdings, issuing undergraduate diplomas, and running schools in higher vocational colleges" at certain professional points, as well as the pilot of "3+2" training (three years of higher vocational education + two years of undergraduate) in some professional points.
Wu Xuemin believes that for the "4 + 0" model, higher vocational colleges, as the main school-running party, are facing the practical dilemma of "schools have no naming rights, teachers have no dominance, and students have no sense of belonging", and the initiative of running schools has gradually weakened; undergraduate colleges and universities, as partners, are facing various assessments, certifications, and declaration of master's degrees, and the requirements for student sources and training have gradually tightened, and the enthusiasm for cooperative schools has gradually decreased. For the "3 + 2" model, higher vocational colleges and undergraduate schools with which they are connected have different training positioning, evaluation systems, and teacher structures, and once students are "promoted" to undergraduates, they will no longer continue to cultivate in accordance with the training mode of school-enterprise cooperation and the combination of engineering and learning, which is not conducive to the continuous improvement of students' technical skills.
For a time, the Ministry of Education guided a number of ordinary undergraduate colleges and universities to transform into applied technology-type colleges and universities, focusing on undergraduate vocational education. In 2015, the Ministry of Education and other three ministries and commissions issued the Guiding Opinions on Guiding the Transformation of Ordinary Undergraduate Colleges and Universities in Some Localities to Application-oriented, selecting some pilot undergraduate universities to explore application-oriented development models and opening up a new path to achieve undergraduate vocational education. However, due to factors such as the inertia of running schools and the teaching staff, in fact, the implementation of undergraduate transformation has made different progress in various places, and the endogenous motivation and external driving force of some school transformations are insufficient, so it is a long way to expand vocational undergraduate education.
Although, the "Opinions" also mentioned that applied undergraduate schools are encouraged to carry out vocational undergraduate education. Some experts believe that this is "encouragement" rather than "requirement" or "must", so it remains to be seen whether the initiative and the strength of the "encouragement" policy are carried out by applied undergraduate schools.
"And public higher vocational education has great enthusiasm and attraction for vocational undergraduates, and it is indispensable." Hou Changlin, president of Tongren College, who has always paid attention to vocational undergraduate education, was previously the president of Tongren Vocational and Technical College, and has been drumming and calling for the exploration and trial vocational undergraduate education of public higher vocational education.
At present, among the 34 schools approved by the Ministry of Education to carry out vocational undergraduate education, there are 4 sources: the first is that 22 are directly upgraded from private higher vocational schools to vocational undergraduate schools; the second is that 9 public vocational "shell" independent colleges are merged into vocational undergraduate schools; the third is that 3 applied undergraduate colleges and universities apply for vocational undergraduate majors; the fourth is directly upgraded from public higher vocational schools to vocational undergraduate schools, and there is currently only 1 path. Nanjing University of Industry and Technology was upgraded from Nanjing Industrial Vocational and Technical College.
"We should increase the intensity of vocational undergraduate education directly upgraded to public higher vocational education." Hou Changlin called for continuing to actively guide ordinary undergraduates to hold vocational undergraduate majors or transform into undergraduate-level vocational schools, and it is necessary to continue to open the "ceiling" of public vocational colleges and universities to upgrade the "original", and establish a mechanism for "dynamic upgrading" and supplementing the "double-high plan".
On December 10, 2019, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance announced the list of high-level vocational schools and professional construction universities and construction ("double-high plan") with Chinese characteristics, and the first batch of "double-high plan" construction lists totaled 197, of which 56 were high-level school construction colleges and universities and 141 high-level professional groups were built.
Hou Changlin explained that the so-called "dynamic upgrading" and supplementary "double-high plan" mechanism refers to the selection of a number of vocational undergraduate schools from the "high-level vocational schools with Chinese characteristics" every year or several years. At the same time, it has correspondingly entered the ranks of "high-level vocational schools with Chinese characteristics" from the "high-level professional construction schools" to the ranks. Similarly, the vacancies in "high-level professional construction schools" caused by the replacement are selected from non-"double-high plan" schools. "Once this rolling development chain is formed, it not only provides a system and mechanism guarantee for strengthening the increment of follow-up vocational undergraduate education, but also injects vitality into the benign development of higher vocational education." Hou Changlin said.
Of course, Hou Changlin believes that no matter who does it, it is necessary to put the entrance gate into the camp of vocational undergraduate education, that is, the newly added ones must have a strong school-running strength and build vocational undergraduates and majors with high standards. If the requirements are not met, they must not "release water", otherwise, it will cause great harm to vocational undergraduate education.
What to do?
"Vocational undergraduate schools should not only inherit the 'gene' of vocational education, maintain the connotative characteristics formed by the development of higher specialized vocational education for many years, but also learn from the effective experience of applying undergraduate transformation and innovate to create a 'new road'." In the view of Cui Yan, the national supervisor and president of the Shaanxi Vocational and Technical Education Society, the development of vocational undergraduate education faces the severe challenge of creating a school with its own advantages, which is very similar to the exploration and development process of higher vocational colleges.
In Cui Yan's view, what is vocational undergraduate education? What is the difference between vocational undergraduate education and ordinary undergraduate and applied undergraduate? What is the difference with higher vocational education? What types of schools run vocational undergraduate education? How to do vocational undergraduate education? This is an issue that needs to be explored and clarified urgently, both in theory and in practice.
In order to run vocational undergraduate education well, at the beginning of 2021, the Ministry of Education has promulgated two documents that regulate the operation of vocational schools such as the "Standards for the Establishment of Vocational Schools at the Undergraduate Level (Trial)" and the "Administrative Measures for the Establishment of Vocational Education Majors at the Undergraduate Level (Trial)", which have become the basic guidelines for running schools and professional settings of vocational undergraduate schools; in March, the Vocational Development Department of the Ministry of Education formulated the "Key Points for the Evaluation of the Operation of Undergraduate Vocational Education Schools" and "The Key Points for the Evaluation of Undergraduate Vocational Education Majors" in accordance with these two documents. The schooling and majors of 27 schools were reviewed, and in May, five expert groups were organized to conduct on-site research on 22 schools that had enrolled students.
The expert group commented that the pilot work of vocational education at the undergraduate level has been steadily advanced as a whole, and has achieved certain results, adhering to the positioning of the type of vocational education and the positioning of the training of technical skills talents, and adhering to the training mode of industry-education integration and school-enterprise cooperation. But there are also outstanding problems:
Some schools declare majors lack of support, school running conditions are obviously insufficient, some schools rely on the application of English majors to apply for infant development and health management majors; some schools declare majors and regional development needs and school positioning obviously do not match, among which some schools declare nursing majors, the instruments and equipment listed are mostly office furniture, relying on the higher vocational specialties just held for two years, there are no graduates; some pilot schools are unclear about the pilot tasks, the concept of running the school needs to be condensed, and the talent training program is rough. Among them, some schools have declared 50% of the so-called "extracurricular independent practice" in the teaching hours of e-commerce professional practice; some schools have yet to strengthen the construction of pilot majors, and at the same time blindly declare new majors, among which some schools have declared 48 majors for the first time this year, involving 12 professional categories; individual places and schools are not rigorous in their work, and the implementation of the main responsibility is not in place.
"The upgrading does not forget the 'original', the upgrading does not change the 'quality', and the direction of vocational education is not shaken." Wu Xuemin, secretary of the Party Committee of Nanjing University of Technology and Technology, introduced that 100% of the school's majors are docked with Jiangsu's advanced manufacturing and modern service industries, and 68% of the school's majors are docked with Jiangsu's "14th Five-Year Plan" strategic emerging industries. The school has been upgraded from a higher vocational school, and first of all, it is necessary to ensure that the vocational education majors at the undergraduate level follow the rules of vocational education, the positioning of talent training and the basic training path. The key to whether the school can be recognized by parents, students, employers and all sectors of society lies in whether the students it trains can adapt to the needs of the rapid development of the industry, whether its teachers and students can solve the technical problems encountered by the frontline of industry enterprises, and whether it can add value to the high-quality economic and social development.
At present, the development of vocational undergraduate education in China is still in its infancy, and it is the "pyramid" in the modern vocational education system. Zeng Tianshan believes that to develop vocational undergraduate education, we must first clarify its talent training positioning and answer the fundamental questions of "what people to cultivate" and "how to cultivate people" in vocational undergraduate education. As an undergraduate-level vocational college, how to implement the requirements of "adhering to the positioning of vocational education, maintaining the attributes and characteristics of vocational education, and cultivating high-level technical skills needed for regional economic and social development", clarifying the positioning of running schools, and taking fewer detours of "transformation and upgrading".
Hou Changlin believes that the birth of any new thing has a process of social recognition. The same is true for vocational undergraduate education. Therefore, it is normal for someone not to understand or even not acknowledge it at present and for some time to come. But as far as vocational undergraduate education itself is concerned, if you want to develop and grow, you need to take every step steadily.
China Youth Daily, China Youth Network reporter Liang Guosheng Source: China Youth Daily ( October 25, 2021 06 edition)
Source: China Youth Daily