There were over 254 million students of all kinds in campuses in China (2005), of which about 28 million were in vocational schools.
Source: China Ministry of Education. Numbers are in millions and in 2005.
Education industry structure in China as shown in the above table reflects the fact that most of the effort of Chinese government in the industry was given to the primary and secondary (fundamental education) schools, where 9 year compulsory education system is adopted. About 171 million students, or over 67% of the total, are studying in this compulsory program.
Vocational Schools
When students graduate from the secondary schools (9 grades), they have two continuous education options: (i) high schools and (ii) middle vocational schools (MVS). For example, in 2005, there were 21 million secondary school graduates, of which 8.8 million chose to go to high schools and 6.6 million chose to go to MVS. In 2005, the total number of MVS students in 14,466 campuses was about 16 million.
High school graduates also have two continuous education options: (i) bachelor degree colleges and (ii) higher vocational schools (HVS). The MVS students are also allowed to pass the tests and admitted by HVS and HVS students are also allowed to pass the tests and admitted by bachelor degree colleges. In 2005, there were 6.7 million high school graduates and 4.2 million MVS graduates, from whom about 50% passed the “high tests”. 2.4 million people were admitted to degree colleges and 2.7 million to HVS. By 2005, there were 7.14 million HVS students in 1,091 campuses and 4.4 million in 481 “Adult High Education Institutes” (AHEI).
There are four kinds of MVS in China: normal middle specialty school (NMSS), vocational high school (VHS), technical school (TS) and adult middle specialty school (AMSS). As shown in the table below, there were 14,466 MVS in 2005 and 16 million students in campus. 4.2 million graduated in 2005 while new recruits was 6.6 million.
Source: China Ministry of Education. All numbers are in millions except “total schools” and in 2005.
There were 1091 HVS in 2005 in China, housing 7.1 million students in campus. Another type of HVS is adult high education institutes (AHEI). There were 481 AHEIs in 2005 and 4.4 million students studying in the AHEIs in China. The table below has more information about the HVS and AHEIs in China.
Source: China Ministry of Education. All numbers are in millions except “total schools” and in 2005.
Governmental Policies and Regulations
The Chinese government had realized that there shall be more vocational schools and graduates than degree colleges and graduates for the healthy development of China’s economy. Accordingly, government had passed several favorable policies and laws to facilitate the development of the vocational education. Especially, on October 28, 2005, the State Council passed and adopted a new regulation “State Council’s Decision to Substantially Develop the Vocational Education (hereinafter the “Decision”)”.
The Decision required all levels of governments to speed up the development of the vocational education for the purposes of “helping the employment, eliminating the poverty, maintaining the social stability, activating the economy and building the advanced culture”. The Decision also stated the goal of the vocational education “to recruit 8 million MVS students, same size as the recruit of high school students in 2010” and “more HVS recruits than colleges recruits”.
The Decision said that over “2006-2010” period, there shall be over 25 million MVS graduates and 11 million HVS graduates. Assuming USD400 annual tuition for MVS and USD600 for HVS, the vocational education will generate USD 50 billion revenues over 5 next years, or USD 10 billion annually. The Decision encouraged the private sector and foreign capital to invest in the vocational school sector in China. The other 2 important laws are “Vocational Education Law of PRC” and “Labor Law of PRC”.
