With the opening of colleges and universities, reading "vocational education undergraduate" is no longer the second choice of "not doing well". However, many vocational education undergraduate students also admit that parents still cannot "proudly say their children's schools". Vocational education undergraduate, breaking the "ceiling" of vocational education stopping at the specialist level, and because of its bright employment prospects, it has become the choice of many students and parents.
However, the construction and development of vocational education undergraduates is also a place of concern for parents. Wang Lihua, a parent of a vocational student, told reporters, "Now that children have the opportunity to go to undergraduate, we feel that at least the road will be wider." However, vocational education undergraduates are also 'vocational education', like normal universities, our parents have no bottom in their hearts. ”
Vocational education undergraduate, how to dispel the concerns of parents and achieve high-quality development? How can we ensure that the future path of vocational education students is getting smoother and smoother?
Solidly promote the pilot from partial to comprehensive practice
In fact, in recent years, various initiatives around vocational education have been solidly advancing.
In February 2019, the State Council issued the "National Vocational Education Reform Implementation Plan" clearly pointed out that "vocational education and general education are two different types of education and have the same important status", and outlined the "four beams and eight pillars" of the future development and reform of Vocational Education in China from different aspects such as institutional system, national standards, "dual" education, school-running pattern, talent guarantee policy, supervision and evaluation, organization and implementation, etc., and the "Plan" also clearly proposed to "carry out pilot vocational education at the undergraduate level".
In May 2019, the first batch of 15 vocational undergraduate pilot colleges and universities were born in China, aiming to explore new paths for the development of vocational education and promote the high-quality development of vocational education.
In January 2021, the Ministry of Education issued the "Administrative Measures for the Establishment of Vocational Education Majors at the Undergraduate Level (Trial)", which made specific provisions on the conditions, requirements and procedures for the establishment of vocational education majors at the undergraduate level. This policy also marks that after years of exploration, the vocational undergraduate education of partial practice is about to move towards the comprehensive practice of scientific norms.
Up to now, the Ministry of Education has approved 33 undergraduate-level vocational schools to carry out undergraduate-level vocational education pilots, 14 independent colleges and relevant public vocational schools have been merged into undergraduate-level vocational schools to hold undergraduate-level vocational education, and some schools in Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang and other provinces are also promoting related work.
"It can be said that the development of vocational education undergraduate is of great significance to improving the modern vocational education system, making up for the undergraduate degree level of vocational education, opening up the key links of the modern vocational education system, which is conducive to building a vertical and coordinated technical skills talent training system, promoting the continuous accumulation of students' technical skills and continuous improvement of their ability level, making the students' promotion channels, career promotion channels, and social upward passages smoother, and the growth path of high-level technical skills talents broader." Wu Xuemin, secretary of the party committee of Nanjing University of Technology and Technology, stressed.
Pan Haisheng, deputy dean of the School of Education of Tianjin University, also believes that the pilot of vocational undergraduate colleges is conducive to exploring the positioning and characteristics of vocational education undergraduates as soon as possible, and promoting the high-quality development of vocational education with Chinese characteristics. "The development of vocational undergraduate education should avoid simple imitations of ordinary undergraduates, and also avoid 'path dependence' on existing higher vocational education." How to avoid vocational undergraduates from becoming the product of the mechanical addition of vocational education and undergraduate education, and realize the development of connotation and characteristics, is a problem that current vocational undergraduate colleges need to pay attention to. ”
In the pilot stage, it should be noted that there is a complete system to support it
"However, at present, the development of undergraduate vocational education in China is still in the pilot stage, and key institutional elements such as college setting standards, professional teaching standards, teacher standards, and degree awarding standards are in a state of lack." Wang Yanan, an associate researcher at the Zhejiang Modern Vocational Education Research Center, reminded: "If there is no complete institutional system as a support, it is bound to cause the development of undergraduate vocational education to stay at the pilot level, and cannot eventually become an important component of China's education system." ”
In Wu Xuemin's view, the practice of vocational education undergraduates has been actively promoted in the exploration of localities, but some bottlenecks have also been encountered in development. He analyzed that there are two main ways to explore undergraduate vocational education at the practical level. One is the cooperative way of running schools. 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 holding, issuance of undergraduate diplomas, and higher vocational colleges and universities" in some professional points, as well as the "3+2" training (three years of higher vocational education + two years of undergraduate) pilots that adopt "counterpart through segmented training". 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 master's degree applications, 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 universities and the undergraduate schools that are connected with them 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 science, which is not conducive to the continuous improvement of students' technical skills.
"The other is the applied undergraduate transformation approach. In 2014, the State Council issued the "Decision on Accelerating the Development of Modern Vocational Education", which clearly stated that "a number of ordinary undergraduate colleges and universities will be guided 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", which selected some pilot undergraduate universities to explore application-oriented development models and opened up a new path to achieve undergraduate vocational education. However, due to factors such as school inertia and teaching staff, in fact, the implementation of undergraduate transformation has made different progress in various places, and the endogenous power and external driving force of some school transformation are insufficient, so it will be a long-term process to expand the scale of undergraduate vocational education. Wu Xuemin said.
"It is worth noting that the academic system, student source and requirements of undergraduate majors in higher vocational education have changed, and it is necessary to clarify the training positioning, build a curriculum system, form a teacher team, improve the management mechanism according to the new needs, and reformulate the corresponding professional teaching standards, curriculum standards, top-post internship standards, and practical training conditions construction standards." Wang Yanan said.
High-quality development "The key is in the transformation"
What is the key to the high-quality development of vocational education undergraduates?
"The key is transformation." Wu Xuemin said that the training positioning of vocational education undergraduates should be transformed and upgraded to innovative technical skills talents. "Of course, this is a systematic project that involves the whole body and drives the reconstruction of the entire talent training system." First of all, it is necessary to implement this positioning into the talent training goals and training specifications of each major, transform the training positioning into knowledge, quality and ability requirements, and into curriculum standards, teaching content and quality standards; at the same time, in accordance with the ability-oriented, modularization of curriculum structure and 'specialization and integration' ideas, reconstruct the training program and curriculum system, and integrate classroom teaching, practical teaching and innovative activities. ”
"At the same time, the simple 'double division' can no longer meet the needs of the training of innovative technical skills, and should be transformed into an expert double division at the same time." Wu Xuemin pointed out that this is both a key issue and a difficult issue, which requires comprehensive measures and all-round advancement.
"First of all, relying on the deep integration platform of cooperative enterprises and schools and enterprises, implement the enterprise practice, project practice and full rotation training system, improve practical ability, shape the spirit of craftsmen and temper engineering literacy by participating in front-line project work; focus on the front-line application of industry enterprises, promote vertical scientific research, and enhance technical skills innovation and service capabilities." Secondly, highlight the practice orientation, innovate the assessment method, strictly control the entrance standards, recruit talents with profound theoretical literacy and excellent engineering practice ability as full-time teachers; encourage teachers to further their academic qualifications, and continuously improve their theoretical level and technical literacy. Finally, it is necessary to formulate standards for expert double teachers and expert teams, tilt the income to expert teachers and teams, hire big country craftsmen and skill masters to work part-time in schools, and set up typical expert teachers to lead demonstrations, and guide individual teachers and teams to upgrade to experts. ”
"What is more needed is that the label of vocational undergraduate colleges cannot only become a gimmick and capital for the enrollment publicity of relevant colleges and universities." Song Yafeng, an associate researcher at the School of Education of Tianjin University, believes that vocational education undergraduates should refine their internal skills, actively cultivate a healthy professional ecosystem, and enhance the sustainable development ability of the profession. "For a single major, first of all, we should scientifically set professional training goals to achieve the organic integration of professional education and general education, professional education and entrepreneurship education." We should also actively learn from international applied talent training standards, such as the Washington Agreement, the Sydney Agreement, the Dublin Agreement and other international certification systems for engineering education. At the same time, we should also actively cultivate high-quality and high-level professional leaders and teachers, and strengthen curriculum construction and teaching method reform. For professional groups, we should actively build various platforms to promote the effective docking and differentiated development of this specialty, promote cross-integration between majors, give play to the synergistic integration effect of professional groups, and accurately dock regional economic industrial structure and pillar industries. At the same time, it is also necessary to make a good choice between scale and quality, hot spots and characteristics, rationally allocate various types of resources, 'key professional key investment, general professional general investment, characteristic professional characteristic investment, elimination of professional stop investment', focus on creating their own brand majors and characteristic majors, and maintain the diversity of the professional ecosystem. (Reporter Jin Haotian)
Source: Guangming Daily