'Crayfish graduates' have last laugh

IN 2017, JIANGHAN ART VOCATIONAL COLLEGE introduced three majors related to the cooking, marketing and management of crayfish in their food management school, which prompted people to jokingly call the school "Crayfish School". The first batch of graduates from these courses have reportedly all secured jobs one semester before graduation. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

At a news conference, Gong Dingrong, deputy mayor of Qianjiang city, Central China's Hubei province, where the college is located, proudly said: "No graduate from the 'Crayfish School' goes without a job."

He had ample confidence in saying that. All 130 students of the school, some of them even one year away from graduation, have secured jobs. The 100 percent employment rate is something that even the top universities only dream of.

The Government Work Report this year vows to focus on modern vocational education to help boost employment and solve the shortage of highly skilled talents. The success of the crayfish courses shows one possible direction of education reform, namely setting the majors of vocational schools according to market demand, not rigid administrative orders.

Crayfish are popular with domestic consumers, and their popularity has been pushed even higher with the help of social media. In 2017, the total production of crayfish in China reached 1 million tons.

Thousands of tons of crayfish even traveled to Moscow as food support for the 2018 World Cup, a destination the Chinese national football team failed to reach. With all the consumption, the value of the domestic crayfish industry has grown to 260 billion yuan ($38.6 billion), and the vocational college identified and seized that opportunity. If more vocational schools can join the trend of introducing majors according to market needs, they will cultivate more talents society needs.

Actually, even the higher education institutions could learn from that. Months ago, a hashtag#Do you regret your major in college# appeared on Sina Weibo, China's equivalent to Twitter, with many college graduates complaining about their majors being useless when looking for a job. It is time colleges and universities learned some wisdom from their vocational education counterparts.