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In this episode of the World of Higher Education podcast, host Alex Usher explores China's vocational higher education system with Professor Gerard Postiglione from the University of Hong Kong. They discuss the origins of China's vocational education policy, recent successes, and the development of vocational universities. Tune in for insights on the transformation of Chinese tertiary education, its alignment with industry needs, and the broader implications for the global higher education landscape.
👉 Episode Links:
👉 Episode Links:
International experience in TVET-industry cooperation for China’s poorest province: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/14480220.2019.1629730?needAccess=true
HESA’s AI-CADEMY: Canada Summit for Post-Secondary Education: https://site.pheedloop.com/event/HESAaicademy/home
Creators & Guests
What is The World of Higher Education?
The World of Higher Education is dedicated to exploring developments in higher education from a global perspective. Join host, Alex Usher of Higher Education Strategy Associates, as he speaks with new guests each week from different countries discussing developments in their regions.
Produced by Tiffany MacLennan and Samantha Pufek.
You're listening to the world of higher education podcast. Season three, episode 13.
Alex Usher: Hi there. I'm Alex Usher, and this is the World of Higher Education podcast. If there's one thing we know for sure about Confucian societies, it's the value that they place on scholarship. Being a student doesn't just connote having future financial success. The very act of studying itself carries an important element of moral virtue.
It's one of the things that's driven university participation rates in Asia to extraordinarily high levels. And also, it's done that in diaspora countries around the world. Here in Canada, 25 years ago, Statistics Canada polled parents across the country on their expectations for their children's education.
They literally couldn't find a single Chinese parent whose ambitions for their children involved community college. But not everyone can go to university. Well, they can, but it doesn't leave you with the most balanced labour force. So if you're running a higher education system and you want to get people to focus on vocational skills, what do you do?
Well, if you're China, one strategy might be to create vocational credentials, but attach them to something a little bit more academic, like a degree, maybe call it a vocational university.
With me once again today, this time to talk about vocational higher education in China, is Gerard Postiglione, Professor of Higher Education at the University of Hong Kong.
We cover the origins of the Chinese government's vocational education policy, its recent successes, and the development of a new type of institution called the vocational university. It's a good quick tour through an underappreciated part of the global higher education system. Let's turn things over to Gerry.
Okay, Jerry, could you give us a sense of where vocational education traditionally sits within Chinese tertiary education or post secondary education? I mean, this is a Confucian society, and as places like Korea and Japan have shown, there's a fever for book learning. And of course the connotations of being a scholar also, you know, there's also elements of moral virtue there. So where does vocational education sit within this?
Gerard Postiglione: You know, China went through a tremendous transition in the 20th century, the early part of the 20th century, the transformation from the Qing dynasty to the Republic, and then the Republic in 1949 to the People's Republic of China. And of course, we're talking about a very poor country at that time with about 80, 85 percent of the population in poverty. So there was a lot to do. And the first phase was learning from the Soviet Union, which placed a very strong emphasis on the connection between schools and factories, school and labor. So China worked with that for a decade or so. Eventually if we look at the transformation from the planned economy when there wasn't an issue of jobs schools and colleges, their graduates would be assigned jobs to the reform and reform period when market forces began to enter it beginning in 1978, but it really sped up in the early 80s.
So you've got in the, in 19 85, a major communist party policy to universalize basic nine year education. And at the same time, you have to consider that access to universities is only about one or two percent from the 18 to 22 age group. So senior secondary vocational education, 50 percent of that became vocational technical education, senior secondary high school. And that was a major change. Now it was very difficult. Of course, there were costs and finance to handle and equipment and so on, but that's when China launched into its first phase of technical vocational education.
Alex Usher: But there's always been kind of a, a view that, and this is not restricted to China, of course that, you know, vocational education is is a less than, right? So there was a big to do this summer. There was a student from a fashion high school, I think her name was Jiang Ping and she won a national math competition, against people from very prestigious institutions. And she said no, I want to stay in vocational education. This caused quite a stir. Maybe not as much of a stir as when it turned out that she'd been coached or there'd been cheating involved or something like that. But I mean, there is that sense, right? That vocational education, maybe in the popular mind anyway is a distant second choice to a university if you can get it.
Gerard Postiglione: Well, the Jiang Ping case was reported here and that was too bad. You know, I can understand the teachers hope to have her students excel in that competition, the Alibaba international math competition in which the contestants could actually use AI. This is the first time in the competition they could rely on it. That's a whole nother story how that worked out. But in her case she was eliminated when it was discovered that her teacher had helped her.
But your question is really about the traditional Confucian view about vocational education. And I think that's true. And it's also universal in other countries as well, as you know, there is that sense that academic higher education is more valuable and so on. But in China, the case was that there wasn't much choice. If you were going into senior secondary education, if you weren't excelling in the academic side and 50 percent of the students, if they wanted to go on to senior secondary their choice was vocational technical education. Now remember, on top of that, China had a higher education system with both four year bachelor degrees and three year, what's called specialized colleges, like community colleges, actually. So, that was the choice, and of course, you're correct about how people view that. Roll quickly to the future, and I think those views are starting to change. And I think that's because the leadership has taken a strong view on how to persuade people of the value in, in, in a high tech age of technical education, vocational technical education.
Alex Usher: Right, and so five years ago, I think it was 2019, the governor of the People's Republic introduced the national vocational education reform plan or reform implementation plan, sorry. What were the key elements of this plan? What were they trying to achieve with it?
Gerard Postiglione: Yeah that was a massive plan at a time when most students were going on to senior secondary education, the access rate was moving to 50%. It's certainly past the stage of mass higher education. And of course, now China has moved on to universal higher education with an access rate, post secondary access rate of 60%. So, the government very astutely, I think looked at their plans for industrial development, where they specialize, what industries looked at, their long term plan for the funding of science and technology, high level skills, as well as middle level skills, and made a decision to become, and the plan is to become the world leader in vocational education. That includes, of course, senior secondary vocational education, but particularly higher vocational education. And what that means is not only strengthening the the three year which is almost 50 percent of the higher education system, the three year diplomas in specialized vocational technical education, but taking the universities which expanded very rapidly, particularly provincial universities and transforming them into application oriented universities with bachelor degrees that are very vocational technical in their orientation. And that's where it is right now.
And I have first, I've seen this firsthand, having worked along with Asian Development Bank projects because they have a lot of experience in the larger Asian region in two provinces in China, the province of Gansu and province of Yunnan, and Gansu built a whole city of higher vocational education colleges. We call it vocational technical city. And Yunnan really raced ahead as a model province for the western part of China in this. So, there's a lot to say about that. You know, you're talking about a massive country who's trying to plan its economy, especially at a time now where we're now down to 5 percent GDP growth, which is a little bit less than it was before and how to position the country in upgrading skills while providing jobs for graduates.
Alex Usher: Well, let, let me ask you specifically about what are called vocational universities, because I, my understanding is, is that those come from roughly the same period, or they come out of the same plan. What are these vocational universities do and how are they different from the specialized university or specialized institutions or vocational colleges that we talked about a second ago, and traditional academic universities. What's the difference in terms of programming and curriculum?
Gerard Postiglione: Okay, the first thing I'd say is the entire system, including the top tier universities, are trying to focus much more on application oriented skills. Okay, but of course the top tier, the the flagship universities and the highly ranked universities, there's not much of an issue. I mean, they're also looking at very special rapid advancement of science and technology in the country, new discoveries and innovations and so on. The rest of the system, which is massive is trying to align itself with the economy and the labor market. So, the transformation of these schools, and they're called in English, and now the translation has changed a little bit, Colleges of Applied Science, Universities of Applied Science, application oriented universities they, the differences is that the relationship with industry is the key element and bringing them much closer. Now, this is a challenge because of course, industries are responsible for not only production, but profits. And the question is by cooperating with a college of a provincial college, for example, what does that do? How do you cooperate with a bunch of academics who were trained in, you know, in academic areas, might have a PhD, and and they're teaching in those areas, but that's the challenge. And that's where that's what, what's happening now. And at the upper levels, it's happening much better. For example, the Huawei company now employs mostly more, most of the employees have PhDs. And and of course, a company like Huawei is absolutely application oriented, but we're talking about the rest of the country. Now, the state owned enterprises are heavily encouraged to engage with the uh, application oriented, or call them colleges and universities of applied science.
There is also a private sector. Now, the private sector is growing and the advantage of the private vocational technical colleges or private colleges, universities of applied science is that they have to, if they don't, if their graduates don't get jobs, of course they're not going to get students to apply to them. So, and there's something each side learns. They learn from each other. So, this is what the emphasis is on. And students from colleges and universities of applied science would also receive what they call credits, certifications for the skills that they learn. A credit bank is probably a good word to use for for what they're doing.
Alex Usher: So you've raised something here that I think is kind of important because in India they're building what are called skills universities, and I can't quite figure out how they work or what they're supposed to do, but there is a big corporate aspect to them, right? So they're either inviting industry in directly to teach programs or they're getting them to help design the curriculum directly. Is that also the case here? Like is there a lot of corporate involvement in these, vocational universities be they public or private?
Gerard Postiglione: I think China's moving much more quickly in this respect. It's also trying to recruit members of companies, corporations to go into universities and teach, to actually collaborate with academic staff to form centers for training, centers for experimentation. They're experimental vocational or let's call the colleges of applied science in different cities all over the country. This is a very serious, the government and the party are extremely serious about this plan to become a global leader. And the evaluation systems of course have to be put in place. This is something which is, is still in, in the process. But the key element seems to be to bring, not seems to be, it's bringing industry into the university. And it also wants to internationalize the sector. And it's very open to looking at models around the world. I've been asked to introduce the German elements. Now, I published a paper with an economist in China called international policies and experiences for China's higher vocational and technical education and we compared the German model with the China model and that's what it was all about. And so it's in the International Journal of Training Research.
Alex Usher: We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back.
And we're back. To what extent is this vocationalization a reaction to the very high rates of graduate unemployment at traditional universities? So I remember as long ago as 2014, China announced plans to turn several hundred universities into polytechnics and maybe they just don't call them polytechnics. Maybe these are some of these colleges of applied science that you've been talking about. But you know, is this about government frustration with imbalances between graduate skills and labor market needs?
Gerard Postiglione: Yeah. Well, a couple of things. First of all the translations of the words you could call them polytechnics. For example, in Hong Kong, we have a polytechnic university uh, which is ranked very highly globally. Or you could call them universities of applied science. I wouldn't worry too much about what you call them. The main point is that they're application oriented bachelor degrees, okay? They are degrees. And this also addresses that issue of families saying, 'Oh, I don't want my children to go to anything but academic higher education'. But if you get a degree from a university and it happens to be very vocational, academic oriented, then your problem is solved about the image of vocational education. So I don't see that as much of a problem.
Unemployment is a very strong concern because the you know, growth in GDP has slowed down. And when you move from mass higher education to universal higher education, it's expected that's going to happen. I look at that as a phase that China's dealing with, but it's looking long term. It's trying to have certain stimulus plans in order to address the short term problem of graduate unemployment. But I think they're holding the line. It is higher than they would like it to be. I, you know, I have to share an experience having attended university in, in the US during times when the U. S. economy had took a very strong turn downward graduate unemployment was a serious problem for a few years, so, the expectation is that this will be turned around, but it may take three, four, five years.
Alex Usher: Sure. Sure. And so what's student uptake like at these vocational universities? I mean, you said, you know, that if you don't, if your graduates don't get jobs, students aren't going to come. So are they coming? Do parents want their kids to go to these places? What's the demand for this? Does it look very different than it does for traditional universities?
Gerard Postiglione: Well, and this is partly cultural, the demand for education in China is still tremendous and it's civilizationally based. And my own students even in Hong Kong, the universities here, who have gone all the way through the system and, you know, if there was a second, third doctorate, they would go on. So, the demand is there, and the students are good generally across China there's a heavy emphasis on education, you know, civilizationally, so, now, is there an uptake? Now, when I talked about the private higher education system, that's a different issue because they don't get much funding from government at all.
Their funding is based on student fees, also investments and donations. And if they, and some of them do extremely well and they compete. And of course, the public system, the state system learns from them. They have to survive. So the uptake will depend upon how well they do. But for the state system there is no problem in uptake because it's a degree program. And there are even top ups. For example, if you have a bachelor's degree, there are ways that if, depending on the job market, you can spend an extra year and pick up the skills you need to, to dive into the job market.
Alex Usher: Right. Well, that's very similar to our community colleges in Canada. So final question, as China continues to reform and expand its higher education system, what do you see as the future for vocational universities? Are they going to be a bigger part of the mix going forward? And if so, is it going to be, you know, will it be confined to certain fields of study or how do you see this playing out?
Gerard Postiglione: Vocational, technical higher education in China is already a major component of the higher education system. And it will stay that way. One of the reasons that the productivity of Chinese manufacturing and whether it's in the green skills or a production of batteries for electric cars or any of the other technical aspects of the green economy China's learned quite a bit from the international experience, working with you know, the Elon Musk's company, or working with IBM, or working with the you know, U. S. tractor companies, and so on. So I think that the answer to the question is yeah it's going to be there and, their plan, and they usually follow through, is to is to go full full throttle into higher vocational technical colleges, polytechnics, if you call them, colleges of applied science and I would expect that the rest of the region is also going to be moving in that direction, particularly for the middle level developing countries.
Alex Usher: Yeah. Jerry, thanks so much for being with us today.
Gerard Postiglione: You're very welcome.
Alex Usher: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany McLennan Sam Pufek, and of course, you our listener for joining us. If you have any questions about the program or suggestions for future episodes, please don't hesitate to get in contact with us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Please join us on YouTube. Subscribe to our YouTube page. Never miss an episode of the World of Higher Education podcast.
Join us next week for our last episode of the year. And as usual, we're going to be joined by Robert Kelchen from the University of Tennessee. He's going to be doing our top 10 list of stories in U. S. higher education. Bye for now.