What hurdles will the vocational education industry and education consortium have to go through

The construction of a municipal industry-education consortium is a hot word and a key word for the current vocational education.

This popularity comes from a document issued by the Ministry of Education recently - the Notice on Carrying out the Construction of the Municipal Industry-Education Consortium (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"). The document requires that about 2023 will be built by the end of 50, about 2024 more by the end of 50, and a total of about 2025 municipal industry-education complexes will be built by 150.

In fact, in the "Opinions on Deepening the Construction and Reform of the Modern Vocational Education System" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions") issued by the Central Office and the State Council Office in December last year, the municipal industry-education consortium was highlighted. The Opinions make it clear that provincial governments will build a city-level industry-education consortium based on industrial parks that has the functions of talent training, innovation and entrepreneurship, and promoting the high-quality development of the industrial economy.

In the past few days, the industry-education consortium of Weifang High-tech Industrial Development Zone in Shandong, the industry-education consortium of Weifang Binhai Economic and Technological Development Zone, the industry-education consortium of Weifang National Agricultural Open Development Comprehensive Pilot Zone, and the industry-education consortium of Sichuan Luyongjiang Integrated Development Demonstration Zone... Municipal industry-education consortiums have been established in various places, aiming to work together to create integrated development, vocational education demonstration and industrial innovation highland.

What problems can the municipal industry-education consortium solve? In the process of construction and landing, what difficulties and problems should be focused on?

1. Face the blockage: deeply bind vocational education with the regional development of the industry and industry

Carry out the construction of the city's industry-education consortium, for what? What is the difference from the previous industry-education integration model?

"The integration of industry and education is the basic feature and biggest advantage of modern vocational education in China, and it is also the difficulty and focus of reform." Ouyang Zhongming, a professor at the Department of Education of Jiangxi Science and Technology Normal University, told reporters that over the years, with the active participation of all sectors of society, the integration of industry and education has played an important role in promoting vocational colleges to change the traditional concept and mode of running schools, and actively orienting, integrating, serving and leading local economic and social development, but at the same time, problems such as "industry-education integration without integration, school-enterprise cooperation is not deep and untrue" and "school hot and cold" still exist.

Ouyang Zhongming believes that in order to face and solve the blocking problem in the integration of industry and education, the "Opinions" put forward the task of building a municipal industry-education consortium with the participation of the government, enterprises, schools, scientific research institutions and other parties. "This is conducive to deeply binding vocational education with industry progress, industrial transformation and regional development, giving full play to their respective advantages, innovating benign interaction mechanisms, and solving problems such as the lack of matching between the supply side of talent training and the demand side of the industry."

According to Zhou Haiying, a researcher at the Institute of Higher Vocational Studies of Changzhou Information Vocational and Technical College, this measure may solve two major persistent problems: "In the past, many industry-education complexes had problems of virtualization, hollowing, and superficiality, but now they emphasize materialization, which is conducive to deeper human resource collaboration with enterprises; In the past, some colleges and universities were greedy for perfection and pursued large and famous enterprises, but now they attach importance to local cities, industrial parks, factor gathering, etc., which is conducive to better integrating and using the resources of enterprises in surrounding industrial parks and getting close to social market demand. ”

"Vocational education is different from other types of education, with strong external dependence, and it is more necessary for governments, schools, industries, enterprises and other subjects to form a joint force and coordinate education." The establishment of the consortium is an innovative model in which multiple subjects such as government, schools, enterprises, industries, and industries promote each other's coordinated development. Tang Zhibin, a professor at the Institute of Vocational Education of Hunan Normal University, said that while making full use of regional government policies, giving full play to the advantages of all parties to coordinate education provides a possible way to solve the "skill mismatch" between school talent training and labor market demand.

Municipal industry-education complex, what to build and how? It is also an important issue that needs to be paid attention to in the process of practice.

In this regard, the Notice pointed out that the total output value of the industrial parks relied on by the consortium is in the forefront of the province, mainly with advanced manufacturing, modern service industry, modern agriculture and other core leading industries, and accelerate the development of a new generation of information technology, biotechnology, new energy, new materials, high-end equipment, new energy vehicles, green environmental protection, aerospace, marine equipment and other strategic emerging industries. The consortium has rich vocational education resources, covering secondary vocational and higher vocational (including vocational education undergraduate) schools, absorbing ordinary undergraduate schools as members, building a consortium talent supply and demand information platform, building a training base for the integration of industry and education, and jointly building industrial colleges between schools and enterprises, so as to promote the close integration of education chain, talent chain with industrial chain and innovation chain.

2. Implementation difficulties: "joint but incompatible" needs attention

The top-level design has come out, and how to land the file has become the top priority at the moment. The Notice points out that all kinds of entities in the consortium cooperate to establish a board of directors (board of directors) with the participation of governments, enterprises, schools, scientific research institutions and other parties to achieve the physical operation requirements of clear property rights, complete organization, sound mechanism and efficient operation.

However, how to ensure the linkage of multi-party cooperation is still one of the key issues that Tang Zhibin is worried about. He said: "As a new carrier of industry-education integration, the linkage of various subjects in the process of multi-party cooperation will be a major problem. For example, in the face of this new product, the government may still have a "policy vacuum" in the coordinated development of the guarantee system, resulting in problems such as "school heating and enterprise cold" and "integration but not integration", and the problems in the past vocational education group school-running model may be repeated. ”

Ouyang Zhongming also said: "The construction of a municipal industry-education consortium involves multiple stakeholders, and under normal circumstances, there are many different types of colleges and universities in the same area, and the organizers are different. Due to different affiliations, different funding channels, most units are self-contained, to achieve the same frequency resonance between industrial parks, schools, scientific research institutions, enterprises and other parties and localities, if there is no perfect guarantee mechanism, there will be a phenomenon of 'joint but incompatible' of industry and education in the city. ”

"Compared with the integration of industry and education in the past, the municipal industry-education consortium covers a wider area and involves more elements. How to reflect the characteristics of the 'city' is also a big problem. Tang Zhibin said that the imbalance in the development of vocational education and the uneven allocation of resources in the city will affect the development process of the integration of the city's industry-education consortium.

Zhou Haiying reminded that attention should be paid to policy issues related to state-owned assets. "The physical operation of the consortium involves the mixed ownership of state-owned assets of public vocational colleges and universities and non-state-owned assets of private enterprises. The process of various forms of social capital substantively participating in investment in running schools and the integration of industry and education with capital, knowledge, technology, management, equipment and other elements is the process of gradual transformation of the property rights structure of public vocational colleges. In the process of such cooperation and transformation, it is easy to form a bundle of interests in assets and step on the 'red line' of the loss of state-owned assets, so it is urgent to introduce relevant policies at the national level to avoid risks. ”

This issue was also mentioned by Ouyang Zhongming. He further analyzed that mixed-ownership schools is one of the important directions for the reform and development of vocational colleges and universities. In practice, there has been a long-standing "public-private" contradiction between the public welfare of education and the profit-seeking nature of enterprises' capital, and many problems in the mixed ownership reform of vocational colleges and universities are still unclear, such as the delineation of assets, the clarity of property rights, the modern corporate governance system based on the property rights structure, and the internal operation mechanism based on the property rights attribute, etc., which make the school-running entities still have concerns and hinder the promotion of the mixed-ownership reform of China's vocational colleges.

3. Development suggestions: build a joint resource sharing platform for industry and education

In the face of difficult problems, how to solve it?

"The key to the alliance lies in whether it can establish a connection method that effectively balances the interests of all relevant subjects, establish a collaborative innovation governance mechanism between industry and education, and pay attention to the role of the government and the market." Ouyang Zhongming pointed out that the government should implement the functions of planning, guidance, coordination, supervision and other functions, optimize the government service mode of major industry and education projects, and put the foothold of the work on promoting the effective implementation of the consortium agreement, protecting the rights and interests of all participants, and supporting policy docking. In view of the reform of the shareholding system, mixed ownership, vocational education examination enrollment system and other difficult points that are considered "dare not touch" and "are not easy to talk about", the grassroots should be guided to boldly try and boldly enter, for example, the government can take the lead in building one or two mixed-ownership industrial colleges as a model.

Tang Zhibin suggested that government departments should establish a normalized mechanism, supplement relevant safeguard policies and measures, and clearly define the responsibilities of all parties. Use fiscal levers to increase capital investment, integrate resources, especially vocational education resources, strengthen service supply, revise and improve relevant policies, strengthen policy guidance and organizational coordination, and macro-control the construction process of municipal industry-education complexes.

"At the same time, it is necessary to use market ties to drive the consortium to continue to innovate, establish a council, promote the consortium to establish a collaborative innovation mechanism of value co-creation, benefit sharing and risk sharing, form a close cooperation relationship through clear common goals and market interest ties, and coordinate and promote platform team building, scientific and technological project research and development, technological achievement transformation, innovation and entrepreneurship incubation, social and vocational training, education and teaching reform, school-enterprise collaborative education and other work." Ouyang Zhongming pointed out.

"More importantly, park enterprises should have a long-term strategic vision, avoid the pursuit of short-term interests, and focus on helping talent training, innovation and entrepreneurship of vocational colleges and universities through the consortium, and promote their own technological innovation and product upgrading." Zhou Haiying further pointed out.

"A joint resource sharing platform for industry and education led by the government and with the participation of vocational colleges and industry enterprises should be built." Tang Zhibin emphasized that this platform can share resource reserves and resource needs of all parties in real time, promote the realization of strong alliance and complementary advantages of vocational colleges and industry enterprises in the region, give full play to the spatial cluster effect, establish a dynamic resource allocation mechanism, and form an ecological pattern of integrated resource sharing of the city's industry-education consortium.

(Guangming Daily reporter Jin Haotian)