Caixin Column 11: The Problem with Vocational Education
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This article is part of a 12-part Caixin Magazine column series by REAP co-directors Linxiu Zhang and Scott Rozelle. Read the full series here.
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China’s vocational education is training technical workers for skills that will soon no longer be needed.
About ten years ago, policymakers universally agreed on “China’s shortage of skilled workers,” and China invested a large amount of money into vocational education and training.
The government decided that not only did academic high schools need to expand recruitment, but that a new brand of vocational education should also be spread across the country. The goal was to allow half of students graduating from middle school to enroll in vocational schools and become the skilled workers that enterprises need.
Policymakers believe this is already benefitting students, as well as factories and enterprises within China. Therefore, China successively invested several hundred billion dollars in the program.
However, we think this was not a wise choice.
We believe that the vocational education and training system is the least effective component within China’s education system. Even if China’s vocational schools could do as well as those in Germany, the current plan for sustaining and expanding vocational education has many flaws. In many places in China, vocational education and training is simply pulling China’s development into decline.
Most importantly, the goal behind China’s push to develop vocational education is fundamentally flawed.
Recently, Harvard University’s William Peterson and Stanford University’s Eric Hanushek published a book emphasizing that many countries, including China and the US, all fall prey to the same errors. For these countries, the goal of education is present advancement or short-term economic development. In contrast, Peterson and Hanushek believe that the purpose of developing education should be to advance economic development in 20 years and to prepare students to work 20 years in the future.
These two scholars point out that countries that have successful education systems are not those countries that vigorously prepare technical workers for today’s economy, but those countries that foresee the economic picture as it will be in 2030.
This does not mean that all vocational education and training systems suffer from myopia. Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands all have very successful vocational education and a large number of vocational schools.
However, the vocational education systems in Germany and China have fundamental differences. The Germans have known for decades that the role of vocational education is not to develop skilled workers trained for special jobs. Their vocational education system was designed so that students could meet success in the future in a number of areas. Therefore, students are required to comprehensively study many subjects, including math, science, Chinese, integrated circuitry, etc. Most of the jobs that were crucial to the economy 20 years ago no longer exist. Everything changes quickly, thus “learning mastery” is more important than learning a single skill that may change in a short time from being considered specialized to vanishing as a job altogether.
As a result, students at Germany’s vocational schools spend 80% of their time learning comprehensive knowledge and skills. German vocational schools don’t just teach students specialized skills so that they can immediately go out and find a technical job. Students have a strong grounding in basic skills, ensuring that they can continuously learn.
Compared to Germany’s vocational students, who spend 20% of their time learning “specialized” knowledge, China’s vocational students spend essentially all of their time learning specific skills. Therefore, when China’s vocational students intern, they do nothing more than repeatedly practice the specific skill they have learned. While Germany’s vocational education system is training human capital for the future, China’s vocational education is training skilled workers for requirements that will soon fade away.
However, new research shows that even farsighted vocational education is still inferior to attending academic high school everyday.
Another article written by Hanushek and others points out that there are major differences in the long-term labor market between most countries that accept students into vocational education (i.e. Germamy and Denmark) and those countries that require practically every student to attend academic high school (i.e. the US, France, and Canada). The unemployment rate, retirement age, and income for older-age workers in Germany and Denmark are higher, earlier, and lower, respectively, than those in the US, France, and Canada. The most rational reason for this is that workers in Germany and Denmark are not learning enough in vocational school, which impacts their ability to adapt and learn new skills. This in turn influences their ability to take on new work.
Considering Germany and Denmark’s combined experience, we can see that even with the best vocational education, the labor market performance of workers graduating from vocational schools is still inferior to that of those with an academic high school education.
In other words, the lesson is the same: what workers need most from education is to develop a solid comprehensive foundation of fundamental skills; otherwise, it will be difficult to adapt and learn new knowledge. In China, education is wrongly treated as part of the economic plan. It is our assessment that China’s government should evaluate the current goals and scope of vocational education and training; otherwise, the pernicious effects of inappropriate policies will be felt in the not so distant future.
About this series:
REAP co-directors Scott Rozelle and Linxiu Zhang wrote a ten-part series for Caixin Magazine titled, "Inequality 2030: Glimmering Hope in China in a Future Facing Extreme Despair." See below for more columns in this series:
> Column 1: Why We Need to Worry About Inequality
> Column 2: China's Inequality Starts During the First 1,000 Days
> Column 3: Behind Before They Start - The Preschool Years (Part 1)
> Column 4: Behind Before They Start - The Preschool Years (Part 2)
> Column 5: How to Cure China's Largest Epidemic
> Column 6: A Tale of Two Travesties
>Columns 7 & 8: China's Widest Divide
> Column 9: China's Most Vulnerable Children
> Column 10: Why Drop Out?
> Column 11: The Problem with Vocational Education
> Column 12: Reforming China's Vocational Schools (in Chinese)
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Caixin Column 10: Why Drop Out?
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This article is part of a 12-part Caixin Magazine column series by REAP co-directors Linxiu Zhang and Scott Rozelle. Read the full series here.
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Over one million middle school students in rural China drop out every year. Though the reasons for dropping out are clear, it is difficult to find any way to improve.
Education, especially at the secondary school stage, is considered the most important driver of a country’s economic development. Since World War II, many countries have transitioned from middle-income to high-income countries, and secondary school enrollment rates have increased alongside economic development. However, this is not so for China. Especially in rural China, the proportion of students in impoverished areas that complete secondary school is very low, with less than 40% of students attending high school. In cities, the percentage is 90%.
Although high school is very important, it still does not fall within the category of compulsory education in China. The more serious problem is that the dropout rate of rural Chinese students is also extremely high. The Rural Education Action Program (REAP) research team understands that the dropout rate for middle school students in rural China is much higher than official statistics show.
We have engaged in numerous research projects related to the rural middle school student dropout problem. The results of five large-scale randomized controlled trials conducted at 262 middle schools across 3 provinces, show that the problem is clearly getting worse. Over the past five years, we have interviewed a total of 18,474 middle school students across different grades. In September, we first interviewed students who had just started middle school. 10 months later, in June of the next year, we followed up. Although we frequently encountered challenges, we were able to confirm the whereabouts of every student. The results of the five studies revealed high dropout rates.
Between the start of the first and second semesters, 4%-13% of students dropped out; between the start of the second and third semesters, 9%; and before graduation a further 4%-9% of students dropped out. Using these statistics, we can estimate the average middle school student dropout rate to be 24%, with an upper bound of 31%. Thus, the average dropout rate for all the areas in our study is estimated to be over 18%. This is much higher than the most recent official middle school dropout rate—2.6%—published by the Chinese government.
Based on our research, over one million rural middle school students in China drop out every year. With their current education, once China enters the next level of development in which wages and the requirements of workers are both higher, they will inevitably lack competitive power in the job market.
Why do middle school students drop out? REAP is the first organization to use progressive quantitative economic tools to conduct an analysis of this issue. Of REAP's five research programs related to middle school drop out, four explored the factors that influence school drop out. These four programs reached consistent conclusions. Students that drop out from school often have four characteristics: poor academic performance, male sex, comparatively older, and poor conditions at home. Additionally, our research also found that middle school students with emotional problems were more likely to drop out of school.
Middle school drop out is a big problem. The majority of students that drop out do not return to school. Their math, Chinese, English, history, and computer skills are very poor.
We conducted further one-on-one interviews to better understand the specific factors influencing middle school students' education. We deduced the following notes from our recording tapes and notes.
The cost of schooling is an important reason behind why students drop out. “My parents have to work hard in order to pay for my schooling, and because of my low academic performance, attending school is a waste of money. If I don’t study and go to work, even if I cannot earn that much, I will at least be able to support myself.”
Some students expressed concern over uncertain costs and said that it was their choice to drop out of school despite the wishes of their family. Looking at our analysis, it could be that low performing students think that the benefits of continuing to attend school are rather low. They say, “even if I could get a scholarship to cover all the expenses, it is still very difficult to attend high school. My academic performance is too poor and attending high school is a waste of money, so the best course of action is to find work and earn some money.”
The majority of students think that academic performance is the most important reason their classmates choose to drop out. Some students with decent academic performance think the problem lies in the poor quality of the school, saying “I am not happy at this school. The teacher does not care about me at all. No one takes education seriously. No one should attend this school.”
Additionally, we discovered that middle school students also face emotional pressure that could lead them to feel compelled to drop out of school. “I regret the path I chose that day. However, at the same time, I did not know that the work I would get after dropping out would be this bad.”
In reality, the main factors leading students to impulsively drop out of school are the emotional pressures and anxiety of attending school. This kind of pressure comes from many places, including the indifferent attitude of teachers, prejudice and playground bullying of classmates, friends urging friends to drop out, a lack of parental guidance, etc.
Our research shows that the reasons behind why middle school students drop out are already clearly developed. Furthermore, because rural parents often have no choice but to part from their children, it is difficult to overcome these obstacles. For the time being, there remains a shortage of quick effective solutions, however these problems are solved. However, if decisive measures are not adopted now, this problem will continue, ultimately leading to human capital shortages in China’s future development that will be difficult to recover from.
About this series:
REAP co-directors Scott Rozelle and Linxiu Zhang wrote a ten-part series for Caixin Magazine titled, "Inequality 2030: Glimmering Hope in China in a Future Facing Extreme Despair." See below for more columns in this series:
> Column 1: Why We Need to Worry About Inequality
> Column 2: China's Inequality Starts During the First 1,000 Days
> Column 3: Behind Before They Start - The Preschool Years (Part 1)
> Column 4: Behind Before They Start - The Preschool Years (Part 2)
> Column 5: How to Cure China's Largest Epidemic
> Column 6: A Tale of Two Travesties
>Columns 7 & 8: China's Widest Divide
> Column 9: China's Most Vulnerable Children
> Column 10: Why Drop Out?
> Column 11: The Problem with Vocational Education
> Column 12: Reforming China's Vocational Schools (in Chinese)
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