Development of vocational education should meet current industry needs

The number of applicants to vocational schools has dropped each year since 2009, while the estimated shortfall of technicians is 22 million nationwide this year. China Youth Daily comments:

Automation has indeed taken over many jobs. But the shortage of technicians who are able to operate, maintain and improve the technologies and equipment has become an increasingly pressing challenge.

Statistics show that the employment rate of graduates from technical schools has been higher than that of college graduates since 2017. Given this and their promising career prospects, it should not have been difficult for the polytechnics to find applicants elbowing their way into the admission offices.

But instead, even some well-known technical schools have been struggling to secure sufficient students to fill up their labs.

The Ministry of Education earmarked 600 colleges across the country to shift their focus from undergraduate education to vocational and technical education five years ago, a pre-emptive attempt to prepare for the predictable rise in demand for skilled workers in the foreseeable future considering China's resolve to transform its growth model.

But the measure has not reversed the declining number of students in the vocational schools.

In the same year, the State Council, China's Cabinet, vowed to increase the number of students studying at primary and medium-level technical schools to more than 38 million by 2020, which seems a target difficult to attain given the continuously shrinking applicant pool for technical education over the past 10 years.

The discrimination against labor work－which is ingrained in society, and also systemically reflected in talent policies and institutions of various levels of governments－has prompted parents to push their children into the scramble for college education, and they unconsciously cast the influence on their children from an early age.

Even if it is more difficult to secure a well paid job as a white-collar worker, and the path to become a professional is narrower and more competitive, compared with the career development as a skilled blue-collar, most parents and their children, including some of those who receive technical education regard vocational schools as hospices, if not a correctional facilities, for youths who are unable to continue their academic studies.

The prejudice against manual work will hinder China becoming a powerhouse of innovation and creation.