How to break the vicious circle of low quality of vocational education and low salary of talents? 【Extreme point of view】
Bing Qi
"Internet giants" with a monthly salary of 20,000 yuan "trampling on academic qualifications"?
The wages of graduates from higher vocational schools are not as good as those of migrant workers?
In January 2023, a "Tucao post" posted by a master's student at a university in Beijing caused heated discussions.
Coincidentally, according to the relevant data of the 2022 Higher Vocational Education Quality Annual Report released by Guangdong Province, the average monthly income of Guangdong vocational college graduates is 3,869.21 yuan, which is more than 700 yuan lower than the 4,615 yuan average monthly income of migrant workers previously announced by the National Bureau of Statistics.
The rate of return on higher education refers to the percentage of increase in income and treatment for each additional year of higher education.
The higher the return rate of higher education, the higher the attractiveness of higher education to the educated.
The average monthly income of vocational graduates in my country is relatively low, which means that the return rate of vocational education is relatively low.
To solve this problem, higher vocational education should not only reward the educated with a paper diploma, but should provide high-quality technical education to the educated, and improve the employment competitiveness and salary of higher vocational graduates.
In recent years, with regard to how to improve the attractiveness and status of vocational education, many suggestions point to improving the remuneration of skilled talents.
However, this has been questioned by employers: If skilled talents really have high skills, it is no problem to increase their salary, but many students who graduated from vocational colleges do not have high skills, how can they be given higher treatment?
This has led to a vicious cycle of improving the treatment of skilled talents - low treatment affects the status and attractiveness of vocational education, which in turn affects the quality of vocational education, which in turn affects the improvement of the treatment of skilled talents.
This vicious circle has affected the enrollment and running of secondary vocational schools in various places.
According to the National Statistical Bulletin on the Development of Education, 5.5705 million secondary vocational education students will enroll in 2018, and 3.7537 million secondary vocational education graduates will graduate in 2021, which means that more than 1.8 million secondary vocational students have given up vocational education halfway.
Taking into account the changes in statistical caliber, at least over one million secondary vocational students have given up halfway.
According to the survey, in some rural areas, more than 60% of the rural students did not go to the secondary vocational school after being admitted to the secondary vocational school, or gave up halfway. Most of them went out to work in advance. Go out to work early.
Relatively speaking, the attractiveness of higher vocational education is higher than that of secondary vocational education, but its attractiveness comes more from diplomas than from the quality of vocational education.
Many students who go to higher vocational colleges are aiming at higher vocational college diplomas.
Some higher vocational colleges do not provide high-quality technical education to higher vocational students. For example, the last year is regarded as the "employment year", and students are asked to find employment and internship units and find jobs by themselves, without any education for students. One year of higher vocational education has become two years; some vocational colleges use students as cheap labor force, and organize students to do internships in enterprises with different majors. The internship work is an assembly line operation.
This situation must be corrected.
The primary responsibility for breaking the vicious cycle of low-quality vocational education and low salaries for skilled personnel lies with vocational schools.
It is necessary to improve the quality of vocational education, provide students with genuine skills education, and improve the employment competitiveness of graduates.
At present, there are two difficulties in improving the quality of personnel training in vocational colleges. One is the lack of funds, and the other is the lack of a modern school system.
To solve the problem of funding for vocational colleges, we must increase investment in vocational education. From a global perspective, the investment in vocational education in developed countries is three times that in general education, while the investment in vocational education in my country has not yet reached Level of investment in general education.
my country's newly revised "Vocational Education Law" clarifies that vocational education is a type of education equal to general education. To optimize the type and positioning of vocational education, it is necessary to benchmark the cultivation of high-quality skilled talents and ensure investment in vocational education.
On this basis, vocational colleges should be further promoted to establish a modern school system, and the professor committee is responsible for the school's professional setting, curriculum reform, evaluation of dual-qualified teachers, and promotion of integration of production and education.
Let vocational colleges adhere to the positioning of vocational education and run distinctive majors.
Only by improving the quality of skilled personnel training can we gain social recognition of vocational education and get out of the dilemma of low quality of vocational education and low salary of talents.
"Beijing Youth Daily", February 23, 2023, page A02