300 students work for one month, and the middle commission is 630,000: Vocational school "sells people", and the unfortunate wind must be stopped
Despite repeated orders from the education department, some vocational schools still export student workers to enterprises or labor intermediaries.
Vocational school internships, originally intended to improve the skills of vocational school students and to make vocational school majors closely aligned with industry, have evolved into a "sell-out" transaction that provides cheap labor to assembly-line factories in a few places.
Internship "selling head", the school earns commission
The case of a 17-year-old student in a vocational college in Yunnan who "died from overwork and died of illness" has recently attracted social attention.
The family said: "Xiao Yang, a 2019 five-year nursing class 6 student, was arranged by the school to work in the company in the name of an internship. Under the high-intensity work of 12 hours a day, he was so tired that he was not allowed to ask for leave to seek medical treatment. In the end, he was unable to seek medical treatment in time. and die."
A number of students from a vocational and technical school in a central province broke the news that more than 300 nursing students in the school were assigned to multiple workshops to process and test electronic components.
Many students are arranged to work in night shifts from 8:00 pm to 8:00 am the next day.
The school promises "a monthly internship salary of 2,000 yuan", but the monthly salary of workers in the same type of positions in the factory can reach 4,000 to 5,000 yuan. Students suspect that the school "earns the difference" in the middle.
A classmate was in a trance due to long working hours. He was injured by a drill bit on the assembly line. After being sent to the hospital, he received two stitches.
It is not uncommon for vocational school students to experience similar experiences during internships.
"When I was in my junior year, during the winter vacation, the school let students go to night shifts on the factory assembly line, responsible for the assembly of electronic components, 12 hours a day, 13 days off for one day. After 2 months of work, I lost more than 20 pounds." An accounting major A vocational student told Banyuetan reporter, "The work you do has nothing to do with accounting. If you don't go, you won't have credits, and you won't be allowed to graduate."
Banyuetan's investigation found that problems such as professional mismatch, compulsory internship, high-intensity work, and differential wages have been questioned by vocational school students.
On the Zhihu platform, some vocational school students raised questions such as "the school requires students to go to the assembly line for internships, what should they do if they don't want to go there".
Behind the chaos of vocational school internships are interests.
A person in charge of a labor agency revealed that low student wages have become a cash cow for vocational schools and labor service companies to earn "capital fees".
If the factory is short of people, the labor service company will quote a fee of 25 yuan per person for an hour. The labor service finds a relevant person in the school and pays the school 22 yuan per person for an hour. The school pays the students 15 yuan for wages, and the difference is 7 yuan.
If the school organizes 300 people, and one person works for 1 month, 10 hours a day, then the school can make a commission of 630,000 yuan.
Li Bin, a sociology professor at Central South University, believes that interest-driven internships not only harm the legitimate rights and interests of students, but also distort the normal talent training mechanism.
It is necessary to put an end to the unhealthy tendency of vocational schools to act as foremen and "sell" students into factories.
Internship chaos reflects regulatory loopholes
As early as 2016, the "Regulations on the Management of Student Internships in Vocational Schools" were promulgated.
At the end of last year, the Ministry of Education and other ministries and commissions revised the regulations to comprehensively strengthen the management of students' internships, but the chaos of post-internships in some vocational schools still occurs.
——Collaboration between schools, labor service companies, and internship units to evade supervision.
According to regulations, before students participate in the internship, they should sign a tripartite internship agreement, and the text "each party will hold one copy".
However, some students revealed that some schools do not sign contracts at all, or use a tripartite agreement to deceive students into entering the factory, and then force students to sign a real labor export contract with the labor service company. The content of several contracts is different and contradictory.
After signing the contract, the school also requires students to hand in the contract and ID card, and they cannot carry mobile phones while working. It is difficult for students to keep evidence, and they lose the conditions for "escape".
——“You can’t graduate without an internship”, students have weak awareness of rights protection and many scruples.
Some students reported that although they generally resisted this kind of assembly-line practice, they believed that the school arrangement was in line with the policy.
Especially when the school threatened that "you can't graduate without an internship", most students had no choice but to accept it.
After the internship, students do not dare to report after the fact to ensure that they can graduate smoothly.
——The channels for complaints are not smooth and the supervision is ineffective.
Some students admitted frankly that they wanted to jointly report, but were unable to find a way to report.
Some reports are often dismissed due to lack of core evidence for key facts such as overtime internships.
——The transfer of interests is concealed, and it is difficult to investigate and deal with it in different places.
In order to evade supervision, the transfer of interests between schools, labor agencies and employers is often carried out by signing hidden contracts. When the relevant departments investigate, all parties refuse to recognize the exchange of interests, and it is difficult to identify the transfer of interests.
At the same time, most vocational school internships are located in two places, spanning across the two departments of education and human resources, and it is difficult to form a joint force in the investigation.
——Low cost of illegality and lack of accountability system.
In the regulations, the accountability of the violation schools and practice units is not clear.
Due to the absence of legal responsibility, legal obligations and prohibitive provisions are useless, which greatly reduces the effect of implementation.
Explore the blacklist system of vocational schools
Li Bin believes that the supervision of the whole process of vocational school internships should be strengthened.
For example, before the internship, the vocational school is required to report the internship plan, implement the approval system, issue the informed notice and system specifications to the students and parents, and clearly inform the complaint reporting method.
During the internship, the companies involved in the case and the intern students will be investigated and verified at any time, and inspections and inspections will be carried out.
After the internship, the tripartite agreement and salary payment will be recorded for random inspection.
Xiong Bingqi, dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, believes that in order to eradicate the interest chain of vocational school internship chaos, the right to know of students' parents and the right of students to choose independently must be satisfied.
For internship positions, students can choose and sign an internship contract according to their majors, internship goals, and employment orientation.
In the final analysis, the chaos of vocational school internships is a problem with the management of vocational schools.
Experts suggest that discipline and accountability should be strictly enforced, and the school and relevant responsible persons should be punished and punished according to the seriousness of the violation of the law and the violation of the law, until their qualifications for running schools are revoked, and criminal responsibility should be investigated for suspected crimes.
At the same time, explore the establishment of a blacklist system for vocational schools, and blacklist vocational schools with illegal practice behaviors, and publicize them when recruiting students every year.
Li Bin pointed out that since most schools currently choose to conduct internships in other places, and internship management involves multiple departments of education and human resources, it is urgent to integrate cross-regional and cross-departmental supervision forces.
Source: "Ban Yue Tan" Issue 7, 2022
Ban Yue Tan Reporter: Xie Ying