A study on problems and countermeasures of China's higher vocational education

Abstract

As an important component of higher learning, higher vocational education in China has almost accounted for half of education industry: with the scale of operation rapidly expanded, managing skills constantly improved, schooling characteristics more and more specific, higher vocational education has become a big concern and primary focus of the whole society. At the same time, however, we must admit there still exists some long-standing mistaken ideas concerning about higher vocational education. In addition, the mechanism of some vocational colleges is rigid and tardy; the "dual-competency" teaching staff is deficient and the teachers' comprehensive quality remains to be improved; the personnel training lacks variety of characteristics; the graduates are comparatively not very competitive as expected in seeking employment, so on and so forth. All these problems will surely restrict the sustainable development of higher vocational education. Some measures must be taken in order to promote higher vocational education to develop faster and better. They include: abolish the prejudice against vocational education; strengthen its appeal; highlight its characteristics in personnel training; strengthen the construction of teaching staff and optimize their overall qualifications; strengthen the organic integration of production, education and research; and improve graduates' employment competitiveness, etc. © 2012 Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg.