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.

The quality of China’s vocational education continuously fails to meet the lowest standards, leaving us with two choices for the future.

The lack of farsightedness in China’s vocational education system means that, despite the large investment poured into it, this system will fail to meet the future demands of its graduates. The wrong goals have been set in China's vocational education, which will inevitably bring serious consequences. These consequences will be felt in the future, however, they are not immediately clear. The problem is that China's vocational education and training system is plagued by fundamental issues, namely that the majority of China's vocational schools are poor (compared to those in Germany), and there is simply no way that China can reach parity.

China’s vocational education and training system is deeply flawed, especially given the large number of vocational schools and the fact that most students enrolling in these schools in the next ten years will be from western and central provinces. Educational experiences are poor, and these problems could soon impact the development process of China.  

Randomized controlled trials conducted by researchers at Stanford University, Peking University, the Hebei Institute of Education Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Shaanxi Normal University’s School of Education, Hebei University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have gathered representative data on vocational schools in China’s northwestern, central, northern, and eastern regions. 
　　
First, vocational students across the country are not learning specialized skills. In this regard, China's vocational schools continually fail to meet even the lowest standards. We randomly selected 10,000 specialized “computer usage” vocational students and 5,000 academic high school students. From this pool, we selected especially poor performing academic high school students within each county, in order to create a more fair comparison with vocational students. For the baseline survey, we had 10,500 students complete a “computer usage” survey. One year later, during the survey assessment phase, we had students complete an  IRT-scaled survey (this survey is meant to assess the absolute knowledge of our “computer usage” students). We found that even vocational students majoring in computer usage still had not mastered new information related to computer usage. In contrast, after one year, academic high school students had mastered computer usage at a much higher level than that demonstrated by vocational students, even though these academic high school students had not studied curriculum related to computer usage.

Furthermore, vocational students had not mastered any type of comprehensive knowledge. In the same study, we had students complete a math, Chinese, and English assessment during the baseline and assessment period. Our results found that not only had students not demonstrated mastery of this content, but that they had actually declined. In other words, after one year, vocational students’ understanding of math, Chinese, and English was actually poorer than it had been a year ago when they entered vocational schools.

Why is the education quality in vocational schools so bad? The answer is simple. China’s vocational education and training system has no standardized or effective management. There is no standardized curriculum, no unified standards for student recruitment, and few of the teachers have experience in the curriculum they are teaching. Teachers at vocational schools are generally those who were relatively ineffective teaching in academic high schools. Although China’s Ministry of Education conducts annual assessments of every stage of the academic education system (elementary school, middle school, and high school), vocational schools are not subject to any checkups or assessments.   

When a school is not teaching its students any kind of specialized knowledge and is instead actually tolerating the student’s decline, students will drop out. Today’s vocational student dropout rate is high. Our study found that dropout rates in China’s central and western vocational schools were as high as 30% to 60%.

If 60% of students are dropping out, what kind of student chooses to stay in vocational school? In 2014, we interviewed several third year vocational students. When asked why they chose to stay in school, most answered “my parents made me stay in school.” In essence, the main purpose of China’s vocational schools is nothing more than to serve as daycare centers for youth.

In conclusion, the current path China has laid out for vocational education and training has failed. In order to improve over the next ten years, China needs to cultivate students, workers, and experts with a strong educational foundation. Teaching students how to weld will not push China into the developed country club. Enclosing students within a daycare center where they study nothing more than dressing smartly and welding has absolutely no use for this country’s development.  

Therefore, China has two choices: either reduce the scale of vocational education and training and thereby encourage academic high schools to recruit students, or reform vocational education by requiring vocational schools to seriously expand the scope of math, Chinese, English and other curriculum instruction. We need to develop human talent in China for 2030 and beyond.  

No matter the solution, China has to establish a structure to ensure that vocational schools meet the country’s standards. Vocational schools will not improve quality through such poor education; vocational schools need supervision; vocational schools need to be subject to evaluations; vocational schools need to cultivate a pool of high-quality dependable talent in order to provide for China’s future economic development.
 

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)

Bad weather in sub-Saharan Africa increases the spread of HIV, according to a study published in the June 2015 issue of the Economic Journal, co-authored by Stanford professor and FSE fellow Marshall Burke.

When the rains fail, farmers in rural areas often see their incomes fall dramatically and will try to make up for it however they can, including through sex work. Analysing data on more than 200,000 individuals across 19 African countries, the research team finds that by changing sexual behaviour, a year of very low rainfall can increase local infection rates by more than 10%.

The results have important policy implications for fighting the spread of the epidemic, as co-author Erick Gong of Middlebury College notes:

‘Existing approaches to stopping the spread of HIV – such as promoting condom use and the use of anti-retrovirals – remain critically important. But our results suggest that other policy approaches could be very useful too – in particular, approaches that provide safety nets to rural households when the weather turns bad.’

Policies and investments seemingly unrelated to HIV – such as the promotion of rural insurance or household savings schemes, or the development of drought-tolerant crops – might have surprising benefits in slowing the HIV epidemic. Co-author Kelly Jones of the International Food Policy Research Institute says:

‘The HIV/AIDS epidemic remains one of the world’s greatest health challenges, with over a million new infections per year in Africa alone. Our results expand the menu of options for addressing the epidemic, and highlight some surprising options that are not at the forefront of people’s minds.’

The research sheds valuable light on why HIV continues to spread in Africa. Previous studies have documented in limited settings that poor women often alter their sexual behaviour in response to an income shortfall. But until now, there has been little evidence that this response is big enough to affect the trajectory of the HIV epidemic.

To fill this gap, the researchers combined data on the HIV status of thousands of people across sub-Saharan Africa with data on the recent rainfall history in each individual’s location.

Because years of low rainfall can lead to much lower incomes in these locations, particularly in rural areas where people depend more heavily on agriculture for their livelihoods, variation in rainfall provides a way to study how changes in local economic conditions affect infection rates. Co-author Marshall Burke comments:

‘We were surprised by how strong the relationship is between recent rainfall fluctuations and local infection rates. As expected, the relationship is much stronger in rural areas, and particularly for women who report working in agriculture. These are the people who really suffer when the rains fail, and who are forced to turn to more desperate measures to make ends meet.’

Notes for editors: ‘Income Shocks and HIV in Africa’ by Marshall Burke, Erick Gong and Kelly Jones is published in the June 2015 issue of the Economic Journal.

Marshall Burke is an assistant professor of Earth System Science at Stanford University. Erick Gong is an assistant professor of economics at Middlebury College. Kelly Jones is a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

For further information: contact Marshall Burke on +1-650-736-8571 (email: mburke@stanford.edu); Erick Gong on +1-802-443-5553 (email: egong@middlebury.edu); Kelly Jones on +1-202-862-4641 (email: k.jones@cgiar.org); or Romesh Vaitilingam on +44-7768-661095 (email: romesh@vaitilingam.com; Twitter: @econromesh).

The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law proudly congratulates its graduating class of honors students for their outstanding original research conducted under the CDDRL Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Honors Program. Among those graduating includes Garima Sharma who was awarded the Firestone Medal for her thesis entitled "Factors Shaping Mothers' Aspirations for their Daughters in India: A Case Study of Forbesganj, Bihar." Sharma's project used both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore cultural, social and economic factors that shape female expectations in one of the poorest parts of India.

The Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research recognizes Stanford's top ten percent of honors theses in social science, science and engineering among the graduating senior class.

Initially struck by the high rates of early marriage upon her visit to northern India, Sharma conducted field interviews and surveys last summer, finding that exposure to educated and employed female role models produced an increase in mothers’ aspirations for their daughters.

Cara Reichard (left) and Garima Sharma (right) both received awards under CDDRL for their outstanding theses projects.

Sharma's research was conducted under the advisement of Associate Professor of Education and CDDRL Affiliated Faculty Member Christine Min Wotipka. In addition to the Firestone Award, Sharma received the 2015 Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo Prize in the Social Sciences under the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Among other award winners, CDDRL honors student Cara Reichard received the CDDRL Best Thesis Award for her honors thesis "The Logic of International Courts: An Exploration of the East African Court of Justice," which analyzed the impact and legitimacy of rulings under the East African Court of Justice. Stefan Norgaard received a Firestone Medal under the Urban Studies program for his thesis entitled "Rainbow Junction: South Africa’s Born Free Generation and the Future of Democracy," which assessed democratic consolidation in South Africa via hyper-local civic interactions among the country's active youth.

"The CDDRL honors program has allowed us to write theses around issues that really matter," said Norgaard. "What sets the program apart is that it pushes us to pursue projects aimed at changing things and making an active contribution to scholarship around the world."

Norgaard, Sharma and Reichard are part of a cohort of ten graduating CDDRL honors students who have spent the past year working in consultation with CDDRL affiliated faculty members and attending honors research workshops to develop their theses projects. Many traveled abroad to collect data, conduct interviews, and spend time in the country they were researching. Collectively, their topics documented some of the most pressing issues impacting democracy today in South Africa, India, North Korea, Swaziland, Cuba and Uganda, among others.

Stefan Norgaard with CDDRL Director Larry Diamond (left) and FSI Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Francis Fukuyama (right).

In the upcoming 2015-2016 academic year, the program will bring in the new leadership of CDDRL Deputy Director Stephen Stedman who will advise a cohort of 15 honors students, one of the program's largest and most diverse classes to date.  

The CDDRL Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Honors Program trains students from any academic department at Stanford to prepare them to write a policy-relevant research thesis with global impact on a subject touching on democracy, development, and the rule of law. Honors students participate in research methods workshops; attend honors college in Washington, D.C.; connect to the CDDRL research community; and write their thesis in close consultation with a faculty advisor to graduate with a certificate of honors in democracy, development, and the rule of law.

A list of the 2015 graduating class of CDDRL honors students, their theses advisors, and a link to their theses can be found below: