Once at a poverty alleviation conference of a university, Ma Yun's words can be said to be shocking, she said:
There is no shortage of universities, research institutes, and postdoctoral fellows in China. There are already many universities in our country, and what is really scarce are high-quality vocational and technical schools. There are 1.4 billion people in China, not everyone needs to be admitted to university to contribute to society, many people need to go to vocational schools to learn skills that can directly serve society!
As soon as this remark came out, it was recognized by many people, in fact, our current situation is indeed the case, the number of unemployed college students is five or six million, but the gap of senior technical jobs has reached one or two million, the sharp contrast between the two sets of numbers makes people reflect, where is the problem?
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Skilled workers are scarce in China
At the 43rd WorldSkills Competition, the Chinese delegation participated in 29 competitions and achieved better results than in previous years. But in addition to being happy, we also see a clear gap with South Korea, Germany, Japan and other major manufacturing countries in the world.
For example, in this WorldSkills Competition, the Korean delegation participated in all 50 events. Continental only participated in 29 competitions, including welding, manufacturing team challenge, hairdressing, and car painting, and even fewer in the first two editions.
This is obviously seriously incommensurate with the status of the mainland, as the world's most populous country and the second largest economy, in hosting the world's largest vocational education.
Moreover, what is more noteworthy is that among the 50 events in which South Korea participated, both in terms of task completion and quality, they showed significant advantages in the course of the competition.
You must know that on the field, the players show their individual skills, but outside the field, they represent the overall strength level of a country's skilled talent team.
The skilled talent team is also the foundation to support the development and progress of the country's manufacturing industry, and it can even be said that such a talent team plays a pivotal role in promoting the high-quality and high-quantity development of a country's economy.
Facts have also proved that there is still a big gap between China and a skilled power in terms of talent reserve and quality.
According to statistics, the shortage of senior technicians in the mainland has exceeded 20 million. In addition, according to relevant surveys, the proportion of senior technicians in China is also far inferior to that of developed manufacturing countries in the world. In Japan, for example, 40 percent of the total industrial workforce is a senior technician, while in Germany it is 50 percent, while in China the proportion is only 5 percent.
The more terrifying fact is that 30 years ago, the proportion of senior technicians in China was 5%, which means that we have not built any mature technician training system for 30 years, and the technician training system has been stagnant.
Even more frustrating is the fact that job seekers apparently have not paid attention to the scarcity of high-level tradespeople. In 2023, the number of college graduates will soar to 11.58 million, of which civil servants are still the first choice for today's young people, with more than 3 million applicants, a competition ratio of 77:1, and a competition ratio of 3,572:1 for the most popular jobs.
Then, there is such a strange situation in our job market: enterprises show "difficulty in employing workers", while job seekers show "difficulty in finding jobs"!
It stands to reason that an ideal national industrial talent structure should be one scientist, ten engineers, and one hundred scientific and technological talents. And China's current ratio of senior skilled workers to in-demand jobs has reached 1:10, so what is causing the shortage of senior skilled workers in the country?
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The root cause of the shortage of senior tradespeople
1. Problems with the education system
"Knowledge can change fate", this sentence seems to have been deeply imprinted in people's hearts. In ancient times, there was the imperial examination, and now there is the college entrance examination. People often think that by learning knowledge, they will definitely be able to change their fate.
In today's social climate, academic qualifications may not be a necessary factor in job hunting, but they are definitely a basic element, and it is your stepping stone. In addition, vocational and technical schools are generally regarded as "poor student gathering places" in all walks of life, and universities are the place where successful students can stay.
Conceptual prejudice leads to contempt for technical schools, seriously affects the quality of technical education, and discourages students.
Moreover, saving for the future development of children, going to ordinary high school, college employment is wider, vocational high school, technical secondary school, higher vocational college, although there is a skill, but the employment scope is narrower.
A more critical point is that there is still a difference in treatment between general high school and vocational high school: for example, if you also enter a state-owned enterprise, central enterprise or public institution, you can only be a worker after a vocational high school, and you can only be a worker for a lifetime.
But if you want to mention it, a requirement for a bachelor's degree will block the channel, so far-sighted parents are more willing to let their children go to high school and take the college entrance examination, after all, with a degree, it opens up the channel for the rise.
If this is the case within the system, the gap between private enterprises outside the system will be even greater.
Moreover, most of the vocational and high school students do physical work, and those who come out with a bachelor's degree do mostly mental work, such as sitting in the office to engage in design and research and development, and the salary between the two is even more different.
In addition, vocational high schools and technical schools out of the secondary school students are also more replaceable, not to mention mechanical substitution, in the future when they are older, enterprises will be more willing to choose young and responsive workers for the sake of efficiency. So, with so many drawbacks, why don't you dampen your child's enthusiasm for entering a vocational high school?
2. Stability of the position.
When Chinese people choose a job, stability is always the priority, followed by treatment, benefits, and so on. Obviously, compared with civil servants, medical personnel, and tobacco railways, it is difficult for skilled workers to gain the recognition of the Chinese people. Coupled with the impact of automation technology on technical jobs, people are naturally worried about the stability of skilled jobs.
Moreover, capital is also reluctant to spend more financial resources and time to cultivate technical talents, and the prejudice of society against technical schools (for example, there are still many people who feel that technical school students are inferior), which further exacerbates the scarcity of skilled workers.
.03
Countermeasures against the scarcity of human resources
To solve this dilemma, we need to start from many aspects. It is necessary to subtly make people let go of their prejudices against mechanics; At the same time, it is also necessary to improve the welfare of technical talents, which many foreign countries have done very well.
For example, in Germany, the average annual salary of a college student white-collar worker is 30,000 euros, and the average annual salary of a technician is 35,000 euros. In addition, if the student is determined by the company during the study period, he or she needs to pay the student a monthly study allowance of 600~800 euros according to the policy.
Driven by this series of policies, Germany is able to attract as many as 65% of junior high school students every year, voluntarily giving up high school and university to choose to enter various vocational students for further study.
Another example is Japan, which also has a similar preferential policy for skilled workers: as long as you can live in Japan for one year, you can obtain permanent residency, which attracts a large number of skilled workers around the world.
Therefore, if we want to change the status quo of the shortage of skilled workers, we also need to improve the social status of skilled workers in the hearts of the Chinese people, and improve the treatment and benefits of technical talents, so as to attract more talents to join the higher than the skilled industry.