"I hope that the rise of vocational undergraduate programs will allow young students who are full of hope for the future to no longer be shrouded in academic qualifications."

Text/ Ba Jiuling

Some people got into "Wudaokou Vocational and Technical College" with 700 points, and some got into "×× Vocational College" with 600 points. Everyone has a bright future.

The former is a nickname given by Tsinghua students to their alma mater, while the latter is a genuine vocational school. I originally thought this joke was a joke, but it actually happened in this year's college entrance examination.

After the college entrance examination this year, a girl from Hangzhou scored 602 points, which was 110 points higher than the first-level score of 492 for ordinary subjects in Hangzhou, equivalent to more than 100 points above the undergraduate line. This score is enough to be admitted to some 211 or double first-class universities in other provinces, but she chose a vocational school because "the school's employment rate is very high, at 98%."

Source: Weibo Hot Search

This news reminded Xiaoba of several strange phenomena that appeared among the more than 10 million college graduates this year.

The first strange phenomenon is that there is an inverted gap between college students, undergraduate students, and master and doctoral students.

According to the "College Student Employment Survey Report" released by Zhaopin.com, only 44.4% of this year's master's and doctoral graduates received offers; the offer rate for undergraduate graduates was 45.4%, slightly higher than that of masters and doctoral students, while the offer rate for junior college students was as high as 56.6%, crushing undergraduates, master's students and doctoral students.

The second strange phenomenon is that more than half of college students agree to go to vocational schools to learn skills.

According to the same report data released by Zhilian Recruitment, under the reality of the inverted offer rates for college, undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees, more than half of college students believe that returning to vocational schools to learn skills can gain the dual advantages of academic qualifications and practical skills, and broaden their job search path.

There are two reasons why these two strange phenomena occurred at this time.

First, from a micro perspective, the quality of some vocational school students is indeed improving.

A few days ago, a vocational school student came to our company to apply for a job.

During the interview, the young man calmly and unhurriedly said to the interviewer: "I am a student at Zhejiang ×× Vocational and Technical College. I am a junior this year, majoring in journalism, and I would like to come to your company for an internship. I have participated in the school's ××, have ×× works, and the highest number of readers is ××. I have a ×× personality and am good at ××..."

Before he finished speaking, others were amazed: "How could a vocational school student who has not yet graduated demonstrate such high quality during the interview? Not only is his language fluent and logical, but his psychological quality during the interview process is also so strong." Later, when checking the internship resume of this vocational school student, it was also shining.

Second, from a macro perspective, these two phenomena just reflect the distorted supply and demand structure of the job market today:There is a serious surplus of college students who have knowledge but no skills, while blue-collar workers who have both knowledge and skills are scarce and hard to find.

Jiangsu Huai'an Spring Graduate Job Fair

At present, my country has only more than 50 million highly skilled personnel, accounting for only 28% of skilled personnel, far lower than the level of developed countries; it is estimated that by 2025, the talent gap in key manufacturing fields will reach 30 million. On current recruitment software, companies offer high prices for senior blue-collar technicians, but still cannot recruit people.

Perhaps it is this deformed supply and demand structure that has led to the current peculiar phenomenon - "vocational school fever".

On the one hand, former college and vocational school students began to be proud of themselves.

For example, Xiaoba’s basketball friend, a recent college graduate, has a monthly salary of 8,000 yuan, which is higher than the salary of many recent graduate students; Xiaoba’s barber, a vocational school student who has never been to college, relies on his superb skills to earn a monthly salary of more than 20,000 yuan, far exceeding the average salary in Hangzhou.

On the other hand, more and more high-scoring candidates are applying to "vocational schools".

Recently, a girl in Hangzhou got 602 points in the college entrance examination to be admitted to a vocational school. Moreover, the highest score in the physics category of a vocational college in Shenzhen reached 595 points, which is higher than the score line of the "211" Jinan University.

Are vocational schools now more attractive than undergraduate programs? After careful analysis, Xiaoba discovered that these "vocational schools" and "vocational colleges" all have a common name:Vocational undergraduate degree.

What is a vocational undergraduate degree?

The school attended by the candidate with 602 points at the beginning of the article is Zhejiang Mechanical and Electrical Vocational and Technical University. Although it is a vocational school, it is not a junior college as most people think, but a real undergraduate college.

What is a vocational undergraduate degree? Here we need to briefly introduce the current education system.

The current domestic education system is a dual-track education system with general education and vocational education running in parallel.

Everyone is familiar with general education. You can study from elementary school, junior high school, high school to university. In university, you can continue to study from undergraduate to graduate and then to doctorate.

The upward path of vocational education is that after the junior high school entrance examination, the 9-year compulsory education journey of junior high school graduates officially ends. Students who fail to get into high school can only choose to enter secondary vocational schools, namely technical secondary schools, technical schools, and vocational high schools.

After graduating from secondary vocational schools, these students either go directly to work or take the independent recruitment of higher vocational schools, targeted enrollment, or adult college entrance examinations to enter junior colleges and continue their studies. High school graduates who fail to get into undergraduate programs in the college entrance examinations can generally only enter vocational schools to study for junior colleges.

After graduating from junior college, students can either choose to work or choose to upgrade to a bachelor's degree and enter the general education system.

From this set of paths of vocational education, we can see that whether it is the "general to vocational diversion" of the high school entrance examination or the admission to vocational schools after failing the college entrance examination, most of the people accepted by vocational education are "eliminated" from general education, that is, the so-called "poor students". In addition, the ceiling of vocational education is only a junior college, which is one level lower than the undergraduate level.

This means that the path of vocational education will eventually return to general undergraduate education, and the social status of vocational school graduates will always be lower than that of general undergraduate college graduates.

Swipe up and down▲ to see more

Therefore, vocational education has been "lacking limbs" since its inception and is a dead end.

Rather than saying that vocational education is a dual-track system corresponding to general education, it is better to say that it is a "half-track system" that is much lower than general education.

But now, the ceiling of vocational education has finally been broken, from "junior college" to "vocational undergraduate college".

CCTV reported that vocational undergraduate degrees, like undergraduate degrees, are also included in the existing bachelor's degree work system, and bachelor's degrees are awarded according to subject categories. In terms of certificate effectiveness, the two are of equal value and have the same effectiveness in employment, postgraduate entrance examinations, civil service examinations, etc.

In other words, undergraduates can take the postgraduate entrance examination, civil service examination, and vocational undergraduate examination. The difference between vocational undergraduate and undergraduate is the teaching requirements.

For example, undergraduates only need to learn general courses and professional courses, but vocational undergraduates have to learn practical courses in addition to these. The Ministry of Education requires that the practical teaching hours of domestic vocational undergraduate colleges account for at least 50% of the total teaching hours, which is equivalent to a 1:1 ratio.

This means that vocational undergraduates have more knowledge than junior college students and more skills than ordinary undergraduate students, which solves the problem of junior college students having no education and college students having no skills.

However, the interpretation here is almost similar to the enrollment introduction of many vocational colleges. The concept of "vocational undergraduate" seems to be too good to be true, and is full of the sense that vocational schools want to "cheat" students.

The reactions of ordinary people also prove this.

"Haha, if you swipe me, you will be admitted to ××× Vocational and Technical College," said a recruitment video of a vocational college on the video account. The comment section was full of sarcasm, "I really want to go, but I took a pen to the college entrance examination" and "I tore up half of the answer sheet and still couldn't get into your school."

These stereotypes assume that students who are admitted to vocational colleges have poor grades.

Some people were full of disgust, saying, "I accidentally swiped it, and bad luck went away." Some people even made personal attacks on the students of the vocational college, saying, "I wish the students born in your school (homonymous: beasts) will be promoted every year." On Zhihu and Douyin, vocational schools are still called "poor students concentration camps."

In the final analysis, although a vocational undergraduate degree is an undergraduate degree, the word "vocational" in front of it means that it still belongs to the vocational education system, and vocational school students are still a special group that is discriminated against and ridiculed by the vast majority of undergraduates.

Is a vocational undergraduate degree a life-saving straw for college students?

So the most critical question is, will the vocational undergraduate degree produced by the vocational schools that are ridiculed become a new way to improve the employment competitiveness of 10 million college students?

If so, then over time, vocational schools and vocational education will slowly get rid of the "stigma"; if not, then the "vocational undergraduate degree" is just a gimmick that looks good but is useless.

Before answering this question, we need to briefly review the current situation of the so-called ceiling of vocational education - vocational undergraduate education.

First of all, the concept of vocational undergraduate education is not a concept introduced by vocational schools themselves, but an educational strategy deployed by the state.

In 2014, the State Council issued the “Decision on Accelerating the Development of Modern Vocational Education”, which mentioned for the first time “exploring the development of undergraduate-level vocational education”. Vocational undergraduate education was officially brought to the table, starting the road of pilot reform.

In 2019, the State Council issued the "National Vocational Education Reform Implementation Plan", which clarified the status of vocational education: vocational education and general education have the same importance.

In the same year, the Ministry of Education approved the first batch of pilot vocational undergraduate colleges and announced several lists of higher vocational schools upgraded to undergraduate levels.This marks the formal establishment of the domestic vertically integrated vocational education system of "secondary vocational education - higher vocational education - vocational undergraduate education".

This year also became the first year of the development of vocational undergraduate programs.

Swipe up and down▲ to see more

In 2021, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council (the two offices) issued the "Opinions on Promoting the High-Quality Development of Modern Vocational Education" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions").For the first time, a clear development goal for vocational undergraduate programs was proposed. By 2025, vocational undergraduate programs will account for 10% of the enrollment in the higher vocational education system.

In May this year, the Ministry of Education issued two announcements in a row, proposing to approve the establishment of 35 undergraduate colleges and universities, of which 16 are vocational undergraduate colleges. Together with the 35 vocational undergraduate colleges that have been officially established before,At present, the number of vocational and technical universities in my country has reached 51.

Swipe up and down▲ to see more

It can be seen that from 2019 to this year, in just five years, the proportion and number of vocational undergraduate programs have increased rapidly, which is enough to reflect the country's attention.

Second, the level of colleges and universities upgraded to vocational undergraduate institutions is improving.

At first, most vocational undergraduate colleges were upgraded from private higher vocational colleges. Nowadays, vocational undergraduate colleges have not only shifted from being mainly private to being mainly public, but many national "double-high" colleges known as "211 Higher Vocational Colleges" have also become the main force in upgrading. The proportion of national "double-high" schools has reached nearly 40%.

(Double-high colleges: vocational colleges selected into the Chinese characteristics high-level vocational colleges and professional construction plan)

The most typical example is that Shenzhen Vocational and Technical College, which was known as "the strongest higher vocational college in the country" last year, was officially upgraded to Shenzhen Vocational and Technical University.

Shenzhen Polytechnic was officially established

Last year, Shenzhen Polytechnic's minimum admission score for physics candidates was 555 points, which was 116 points higher than the undergraduate admission score of 439 points for physics in Guangdong in 2023, and exceeded the admission scores of two "Double First-Class" universities - Guangzhou Medical University with 554 points and Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine with 551 points.

The highest score of physics candidates admitted to Shenzhen Polytechnic was 595 points, which is higher than the passing scores of two 211 universities in Guangdong - South China Normal University with 588 points and Jinan University with 586 points.

Third, and most importantly, from an employment perspective, a vocational undergraduate degree does seem to be more attractive.

After Shenzhen Polytechnic was upgraded to Shenzhen Polytechnic University, it set up 6 vocational undergraduate majors, namely electronic information engineering technology, modern communications engineering, artificial intelligence engineering technology, intelligent manufacturing engineering technology, new energy vehicle engineering technology, and digital animation. Almost every major hits the spot in terms of current employment trends.

Well-known universities such as Shenzhen Polytechnic also have school-enterprise cooperation with many large enterprises. For example, Shenzhen Polytechnic has different degrees of cooperation with Huawei, BYD, Tencent, DJI, ZTE and other companies in corporate mentor teaching and internship training. This year, the candidate with 602 points in Hangzhou was admitted to Zhejiang Mechanical and Electrical Vocational Technical University, and the campus recruitment companies he faced were Hangzhou-Hong Kong Metro, Shanghai Railway Bureau, Hikvision, Zhejiang University Supcon, etc.

In terms of employment rate, the employment rate of Shenzhen Polytechnic has been above 96% in the past three years, and the employment rate of Zhejiang Mechanical and Electrical Vocational Technical University has even remained above 98% in the past six years. In comparison, the employment rate of Xiaoba’s alma mater is less than 90%.

The lifeblood of vocational undergraduates is enterprises

However, even so, it is too early to conclude that vocational undergraduates are a new way out for college students, because a major difference between vocational undergraduates and ordinary undergraduates is that they have more practical technical advantages.

Lanzhou Vocational and Technical University of Resources and Environment (abbreviated as "Lanzhou University of Resources and Environment") allows students majoring in energy storage materials engineering technology to make a button-sized battery with more than a dozen processes in the training room.

Undergraduate students majoring in energy storage materials engineering technology at Lanzhou University of Science and Technology are learning to make batteries in the training room

Source: China News Weekly

If students are studying in an ordinary undergraduate program, they will most likely only see in books the dozen or so steps involved in making this battery, the positive electrode material, the vacuum-sealed working chamber, the diaphragm, the electrolyte and a set of accessories.

The gap between textbooks and practice is huge. According to China News Weekly, when the workshop produces materials, the R&D design data is magnified several times, and the parameters are often distorted. If students want to discover and solve these problems, they need teachers to guide students to make batteries in practical training classes.

The raw materials need to be mixed with multiple materials in different proportions. The teacher gives a rough range, and then the students can find the best proportion through multiple experiments.

The advantages of practical technology are sometimes not enough to rely solely on the strength of the school, and often require cooperation between schools and enterprises.

Nanjing Polytechnic University introduced a five-axis CNC machine tool many years ago. CNC machine tools are called "industrial mother machines" in the manufacturing industry and are used in many key industries such as military, aerospace, and aviation. Five-axis machine tools represent the most advanced machine tools.

However, none of the teachers in the school can operate machine tools of this level skillfully, so they have to remain idle. A single tool on the machine tool costs as much as RMB 100,000, and improper use will cost another RMB 100,000.

Therefore, in practical teaching, enterprises are often required to send senior engineers or provide corresponding production equipment. But for many enterprises, this is a thankless task. Moreover, the more suppliers there are, the more school-enterprise cooperation tends to be a "buyer's market" such as enterprises.

Colleges and universities that are unable to cooperate with enterprises will also lead to a significant decline in the employment competitiveness of vocational undergraduate programs.

When China Newsweek interviewed the first batch of students who were promoted to vocational undergraduate programs at Nanjing University of Technology, it learned that the current dilemma faced by vocational undergraduate colleges in school-enterprise cooperation is that many enterprises cannot see the obvious benefits, and many enterprises are able to freely recruit the talents they need, so there is no need to cooperate with a specific vocational college.

In order to promote school-enterprise cooperation, the operating idea of ​​Nanjing Polytechnic University President Xie Yonghua is that the school must transfer certain resources to the enterprise. For example, Nanjing Polytechnic University provides Jingdiao Group with a 3,000 square meter training base and office space, as well as annual service fees for teaching and training.

Jingdiao Group provided Nanjing Polytechnic University with the most advanced CNC machine tools worth more than 20 million yuan for free, and provided engineers to complete 800 hours of work each year to teach students how to design and program, operate equipment, and provide theoretical teaching and graduation project guidance. However, only a few can be as successful as Nanjing Polytechnic University.

Signing ceremony between Nanjing Polytechnic University and Beijing Jingdiao Technology Group

Source: Nanjing University of Technology official website

This depends on the school's own resources. For example, Nanjing Polytechnic University is the best public vocational undergraduate university in Nanjing; and the relatively successful Lanzhou University of Environmental Science and Technology was jointly established by the Gansu Provincial Government, the China Meteorological Administration, and the Ministry of Emergency Management.

In other words, what determines the quality of vocational undergraduate education does not lie in the school education itself, but in whether there are companies that can provide employment.

Secondly, the core advantage of vocational undergraduate education lies in school-enterprise cooperation, which means that there will not be that many colleges and universities that can occupy the cooperation position with leading enterprises.

The 2023 National Education Development Statistical Bulletin shows that the total enrollment of general and vocational undergraduate and junior college students nationwide is 10.4222 million, of which 4.7816 million are general undergraduate students, 89,900 are vocational undergraduate students, and 5.5507 million are higher vocational (junior college) students.

The current enrollment scale of vocational undergraduate programs still has a lot of room for growth to reach the goal of "no less than 10% of the enrollment scale of higher vocational education" in the opinions of the two offices in 2021.

If we rush to catch up with the goal and increase the number of vocational undergraduate colleges rapidly, the value of existing colleges will be diluted.

Finally, from an academic point of view, although students graduating from vocational undergraduate programs receive the same diplomas and degree certificates as ordinary undergraduate programs, their prospects for direct employment after entering society will be better.

However, as Zhang Xuefeng said, vocational undergraduates will have certain difficulties in postgraduate entrance examinations and academic development.Students who graduate from vocational undergraduate programs may be weaker in academic ability than those who graduate from general undergraduate programs.

Conclusion

More than 20 years ago, the 1998 revised edition of the Xinhua Dictionary contained the following passage: "Zhang Hua was admitted to Peking University, Li Ping entered a secondary vocational and technical school, and I worked as a salesperson in a department store. We all had bright futures."

Examples of the use of colons in the 1998 revised edition of the Xinhua Dictionary

The historical context of this sentence is the golden age of vocational education in the 1980s and 1990s.

In order to develop industry, state-owned enterprises had an unimaginable demand for skilled workers. At that time, graduates from technical secondary schools could enter state-owned enterprises as cadres, and graduates from technical schools could directly enter factories. At that time, factory workers had no capitalists who oppressed them, and everyone was a high-ranking "worker".

In 1981, Wang Chuanfu, the 15-year-old CEO of BYD, had the biggest wish of being admitted to a technical secondary school. However, he was unfortunately admitted to a high school because his mother passed away during the junior high school entrance examination. Gao Fenglin, the first person to weld aerospace engines, has welded more than half of the aerospace vehicles of New China. He honed his skills when he was in the factory after going to technical school.

In 1985, the central government issued the "Decision on Education System Reform", which clearly stated that in the future, when all units recruit workers, they must first select and admit the best graduates from vocational and technical schools.

However, the good times did not last long. All these golden dreams finally collapsed in the wave of layoffs of state-owned enterprise employees in the late 1990s.

Workers went from being middle class to being poor, and technical schools filled with children of factory employees went from being the ideal for top students to being a helpless place for poor students.

Then, in 1999, the Ministry of Education launched the most ambitious and far-reaching expansion of undergraduate enrollment in the history of Chinese higher education. Since then, entering high school and squeezing through the narrow bridge of the college entrance examination to enter the university campus has become the learning mission of several generations, and vocational school students have become increasingly bleak.

Nowadays, with the rise of vocational schools and the difficulty for college students to find jobs, it is inevitable that people think that this is an endless cycle.I hope that the rise of vocational undergraduate programs will allow young students who are full of hope for the future to no longer be shrouded in academic qualifications.

Author of this article | Mei Haoyu | responsibilityEditor | He Mengfei

Editor-in-Chief | He Mengfei | Image source |VCG