Higher Vocational Education and Skill Formation in China

This book examines how China’s higher vocational education (HVE) has been developed as a means of skill formation from multiple perspectives including policy, history, culture, sociology, and comparative studies.

Through systematic analysis of relevant state policies (1980–2019), alongside empirical finding, the book reveals domestic and global policy contexts, positive and negative policy effects, and theoretical and practical policy implications for China’s skill formation through higher education reform by developing HVE to supply a high-level technically skilled workforce. Analyses and discussions are based on multiple analytical frameworks including human capital, Confucianism, neoinstitutionalism, and UNESCO’s ISCED Level 5. It concludes that China’s HVE/skill formation has been developed by mainly following the country’s distinctive political economy and history, but that it neglects the dominant local culture, which in turn has led to unsolved and newly emerged challenges impeding HVE’s high-quality development. Three policy foci are proposed for future policymaking to address such negligence.

Demonstrating how China reforms, develops, and improves the higher education system to serve skill formation within the context of globalization, this book will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of vocational and technical education, comparative education, higher education, sociology of education, policy studies, and China studies.