December 24, 2024
SINGAPORE – When Ms Xia Tianxin, 18, first told her family of her plan to enrol in a vocational school three years ago, her grandparents baulked at the idea.
“To put it bluntly, some people, especially the older generation, think vocational schools are for bad students or those who can’t study,” she told The Straits Times.
She said her grades were not good and she felt she would struggle if she took the academic route.
“Thankfully, my parents were more progressive and said it was okay for me to attend vocational school as they didn’t want me to be overly stressed,” said Ms Xia, who is studying financial services and management at Beijing Vocational College of Finance and Commerce.
The attitude of Ms Xia’s grandparents towards vocational schools is not uncommon in China, where these schools have long been seen as low-quality.
Since 2022, China has been overhauling its vocational education system, such as by revising a law to give vocational education the same status as general education.
This comes as the country struggles to meet growing demand for skilled blue-collar workers as it modernises its manufacturing and services sectors. China will be short of 30 million such workers by 2025, according to official projections.
On Dec 12, China’s Ministry of Education announced a suite of 40 new vocational majors, the largest expansion since 2021. More than half of the courses are in digital technology or advanced manufacturing, and in sectors such as aerospace equipment manufacturing, said the ministry.
The new majors also cover areas such as artificial intelligence, new materials and biomedicine, along with programmes on nuclear engineering and technology, high-quality farmland construction and resource recycling engineering.
In China, students go through nine years of compulsory education – six in primary school and three in junior high school. After that, they can go to a senior high school to take the gaokao – the national undergraduate entrance exam to enter university – or to a vocational senior high and then a vocational college.
In 2020, about 35 per cent of the cohort enrolled in vocational colleges, while the rest went to universities, according to local media reports.
Professor Xiong Bingqi, director of the Beijing-based 21st Century Education Research Institute think-tank, said whether vocational education appeals to the young depends on the societal perception of such an education pathway, along with the quality of the courses offered.
In recent times, there has been a “slight shift in perspective”, he noted, with some students choosing vocational education over a university degree, which is “a reflection of societal development”.
Like in other countries, university graduates in China tend to earn more than vocational college graduates.
In 2022, a Chinese recruitment company survey found that around 64 per cent of vocational college graduates earn less than 5,000 yuan (S$930) a month. In comparison, a fresh university graduate earned an average of 5,990 yuan a month in the same year, according to a Chinese higher-education consulting firm.
Still, job prospects for those with specialised skills appear to have become rosier.
Demand for blue-collar jobs is on the rise, with average salaries increasing by 35.8 per cent compared with five years ago, according to an annual report released in June 2024 by Chinese career development platform Zhaopin.
In the first quarter of 2024, applications for blue-collar jobs among young people aged 25 and under increased by 165 per cent compared with the same period in 2019, the report showed.
But for some students, vocational school is just a longer route to a university degree.
Student Ma Xinyang said: “Is it likely I will get a good job after I graduate from vocational school? No.”
The 17-year-old, who attends a vocational school in Beijing and hopes to work in the insurance sector in the future, added: “Ultimately, employers still look at your educational qualifications, so I have to get the best education that is within my ability and will try to get a bachelor’s degree.”
Dr Peter Gu, an associate professor at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, said tertiary education in China has become too uniform – millions of students take the same path of going to university.
“Today’s economy, and that of the future, needs top-level scientists. But many more tooling engineers and skilled workers are needed to turn scientific discoveries into useful tools that sustain the modern society,” he said.
Calling the move to add high-tech vocational majors a good strategy, Dr Gu nevertheless added: “Unless working opportunities and salaries for vocational graduates become seen as equal to those for university graduates, vocational education will remain the ‘second-class’ little brother in tertiary education.”
Ms Xia, the vocational student, is hopeful that societal attitudes will change as vocational education gets a push from the authorities.
She said: “I think people will be less biased against vocational students over time, as schools have been pushing out a lot of substantial majors that are more respectable in society.”
- Michelle Ng is China correspondent at The Straits Times. She is interested in Chinese foreign policies, property trends, demographics, education and rural issues.