As the latest wave of technological revolution and industrial transformation accelerates, with artificial intelligence and other new technologies becoming increasingly integrated into production and daily life, industrial upgrading is imposing higher demands on talent cultivation.
As a key base for cultivating high-quality technical and skilled talent, vocational education is not only a vital component of building an education powerhouse but also an important pillar for driving the deep integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation, and for aligning talent supply with industry demand.
In recent years, China's vocational education reform has continued to deepen, with industry-education integration and school-enterprise cooperation steadily advancing. Vocational education is playing an increasingly prominent role in serving economic and social development and supporting industrial transformation and upgrading.
Against the backdrop of coordinated efforts to advance education, science and technology, and talent development, how can vocational education better serve national strategies and industrial development needs? How can industry-education integration be deepened to effectively connect the education chain with the industrial chain? Faced with the opportunities and challenges brought by AI and other new technologies, how should vocational colleges innovate their talent cultivation models? Recently, a reporter interviewed Fang Linzhong, President of Shanghai Nanhu Vocational and Technical College.
Industry-Education Integration Drives Reform of Talent Cultivation Models
Q: As industrial transformation and upgrading accelerate alongside technological innovation, what changes have occurred in enterprises' demand for high-quality technical and skilled talent? How should vocational colleges adjust their talent cultivation direction to better serve national strategies and industrial development?
Fang Linzhong: China's vocational education is currently in one of its best periods of development in history, with increasing policy support, gradually rising social recognition, and stronger enterprise demand for skilled talent.
From a policy perspective, the newly revised Vocational Education Law legally establishes that vocational education holds equal importance to general education. Vocational education is no longer simply viewed as a tier of general higher education but as a parallel type of education alongside general education. The Outline of the Plan for Building an Education Powerhouse (2024-2035) has also made arrangements for the construction of the vocational education system.
At present, China's vocational education has gradually formed a training system that connects secondary vocational education, higher vocational college education, and vocational undergraduate education. In the future, as vocational education continues to develop, further exploration can be made into cultivating technical and skilled talent at even higher levels, broadening the growth space for skilled talent.
From the perspective of education reform direction, vocational education is placing increasing emphasis on aligning with industry needs. The Ministry of Education is advancing coordinated reform of key elements including majors, curricula, textbooks, teachers, and internship training. Shanghai is also promoting comprehensive reform of higher education, emphasizing "service orientation and strong contribution," with the core goal of driving talent cultivation to adapt to industrial development and enhancing vocational colleges' capacity to serve economic and social development.
From the perspective of enterprise demand, the changes are quite notable. In the past, some enterprises placed more emphasis on academic credentials, but now enterprises increasingly value practical operational skills. Particularly for certain front-line production positions, enterprises are more willing to hire vocational college graduates who have undergone professional skills training.
Meanwhile, as industrial technology iterates faster, enterprise requirements for skilled talent are also changing. First, some traditional positions are declining while new professions and new positions continue to emerge. With the widespread application of robotics, AI, and other technologies, some repetitive and standardized operational positions are gradually being replaced by robots, but at the same time, new positions such as robot application, equipment maintenance, and intelligent control have been created.
Second, job skill requirements are becoming more composite. Taking the new energy vehicle industry as an example, traditional fuel vehicle maintenance mainly involves mechanical structures such as engines and transmissions, while new energy vehicle maintenance requires knowledge of electrical control, electronic technology, network communications, and more. With the development of intelligent driving technology, vehicle maintenance personnel also need to understand intelligent control and related systems.
Third, the skill renewal cycle has shortened significantly. In the past, mastering one skill might have been sufficient for a position for five or even ten years, but now industrial technology iterates faster and faster, and the effective lifespan of skills continues to shrink. Vocational colleges cannot teach students all skills within a limited program duration; what matters more is cultivating students' ability to learn continuously so they can keep updating their knowledge and skills after graduation.
Q: Industry-education integration and school-enterprise cooperation have become important directions for vocational education development. In actual school operations, how do vocational colleges incorporate enterprise needs into major design, curriculum development, and the entire talent cultivation process to achieve precise alignment between talent cultivation and industry demand?
Fang Linzhong: Vocational education must closely align with industry needs. The quality of talent cultivation is reflected not only in whether students can adapt to enterprise job requirements but also in their ability to continue growing after employment. Therefore, industry-education integration cannot remain at the level of signing cooperation agreements and establishing internship bases; it must promote deep enterprise involvement in the entire talent cultivation process.
First, establish a regular enterprise needs research mechanism. Currently, our college requires school leaders to conduct enterprise research at least twice a month, and secondary schools and professional teachers must also go deep into enterprises to understand technological development, job changes, and talent needs. At the same time, our college conducts annual industry talent demand research and revises talent cultivation plans accordingly. In addition, we strengthen follow-up surveys of graduates, tracking their employment situation, job changes, and career growth one and three years after graduation, with plans to extend the tracking period to five years in the future to verify the quality of talent cultivation.
Second, promote the integration of enterprise needs into curriculum development. Our college proposes that each major's curriculum should be dynamically updated at a rate of 15% annually. Based on changes in enterprise job competencies, we map out competency profiles and translate them into curriculum standards, textbooks, and teaching content. Currently, our college's digital media and new energy vehicle programs, two key reform majors in Shanghai, plan to achieve full co-construction of all courses with enterprises within the next three years, ensuring that teaching content keeps pace with industrial technology development.
Third, promote school-enterprise cooperation extending to the front end of talent cultivation. In September of this year, our college partnered with Renji Hospital to launch a care talent training class, with 34 students participating. The hospital participated in talent selection and training program design from the enrollment stage. Both parties plan to jointly develop 10 courses and related textbooks within three years, with our college teachers and hospital professionals co-teaching. Students begin hospital practicum from lower grades, receiving one-on-one mentoring from nurses, and increase practice time in higher grades to familiarize themselves with job requirements in advance and shorten the adaptation period after graduation. This model also helps hospitals reserve talent in a targeted manner based on actual job needs.
Broadening Growth Pathways for High-Quality Skilled Talent
Q: Currently, AI and other new technologies are developing rapidly, profoundly changing industrial structures and job skill requirements. What opportunities and challenges do you think AI will bring to vocational education?
Fang Linzhong: AI is changing the employment structure and job skill requirements, bringing new opportunities and challenges to vocational education.
From the challenge perspective, on one hand, AI is replacing some repetitive and standardized positions. For example, intelligent customer service can already handle routine inquiries, and some repetitive operations in manufacturing are gradually being completed by automated equipment and robots. On the other hand, AI is also driving the upgrading of traditional positions, placing higher demands on practitioners' comprehensive capabilities. Taking vehicle maintenance as an example, in the past, maintenance personnel mainly relied on experience to diagnose faults, but now they can use AI and backend data for preliminary diagnosis and then carry out targeted repairs. This requires practitioners not only to master professional knowledge and operational skills but also to possess the ability to use AI tools to solve practical problems.
From the opportunity perspective, AI is expected to drive vocational education reform in three aspects. First, improving curriculum development and teaching efficiency. With the help of AI large models, enterprise job competency requirements can be translated into curriculum content, assisting teachers in writing textbooks, producing courseware and lesson plans, reducing repetitive work, and allowing teachers to devote more energy to classroom teaching. Second, expanding practical teaching scenarios. Through AI, virtual reality, and other technologies, real enterprise production scenarios can be brought into the classroom, allowing students to conduct simulated training, which to some extent alleviates problems such as enterprise experts being unable to frequently visit schools to teach and insufficient practical training resources. Third, driving reform of skill assessment methods. Vocational education places more emphasis on practical operational ability and cannot rely solely on exam scores to evaluate students. For example, the hotel service major needs to assess students' operational procedures and service standards, and in the past, teachers found it difficult to comprehensively observe each student's operational process. In the future, with AI and camera recognition technologies, students' operations can be recorded, analyzed, and evaluated, enabling more refined process-based assessment.
Q: Faced with the changes brought by AI, how should vocational colleges promote deep integration of AI with professional teaching to cultivate composite skilled talent adapted to future industrial development?
Fang Linzhong: In terms of talent cultivation, our college mainly advances AI education from three levels. First, popularize AI literacy education. We offer basic AI courses to students of all majors, helping them master fundamental AI knowledge and understand related technologies and their applications. Second, promote "AI + major" and "AI + course" integration. We integrate AI tool applications into professional teaching, enabling students to master methods of using AI to improve work efficiency and solve practical problems. Third, offer AI micro-majors. For students with further learning needs, we provide more systematic AI knowledge and skills training to help students expand their capabilities on top of their original majors.
It must be emphasized that AI cannot replace the learning of professional foundational knowledge and core skills. AI is essentially an auxiliary tool. Teachers can use AI to produce courseware, but classroom organization and instructional design still require professional judgment. For students, only with a solid professional foundation can they effectively use AI to solve practical problems.
Q: Although social recognition of vocational education has gradually increased, the notion of "valuing academic credentials over skills" still exists. How do you think the attractiveness of vocational education can be further enhanced and growth pathways for skilled talent broadened?
Fang Linzhong: In recent years, with the continuous improvement of the vocational education system, social recognition of vocational education has gradually increased, but changing the traditional notion of "valuing academic credentials over skills" still requires joint efforts from the government, schools, enterprises, and society.
From the perspective of educational advancement channels, Shanghai has already formed multiple training models including secondary-higher vocational integration, secondary-vocational undergraduate integration, and higher vocational-undergraduate integration, providing vocational college students with more options for further education and enhancing the attractiveness of vocational education. From the enrollment situation, some students' and parents' perspectives are changing. Some students whose scores meet the admission requirements of regular high schools or even undergraduate institutions still actively choose vocational education.
However, the key to truly enhancing the attractiveness of vocational education lies not only in opening up educational advancement channels but also in smoothing the career growth pathways for skilled talent. Currently, graduates of regular higher education institutions can develop along professional technical title paths such as engineer and senior engineer, while some front-line skilled talent, despite having high technical levels, still face insufficient connection between skill levels, career promotion, and compensation. From the actual situation, different types of enterprises still differ in their skilled talent cultivation and promotion mechanisms. Some state-owned enterprises have established relatively complete skill level and career promotion systems, while some private and foreign-funded enterprises still have room for further improvement.
In the future, the career development mechanism for skilled talent should be further improved, promoting effective linkage between skill levels, compensation, and career promotion, so that skilled talent have clearer growth paths and development expectations. Ultimately, enhancing the attractiveness of vocational education requires not only giving students employment opportunities but also giving them room for career development. Only by smoothing the growth pathways for skilled talent can the attractiveness of vocational education be enhanced and more solid high-quality technical and skilled talent support be provided for industrial transformation and upgrading.
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