Plan to tie industries, education underway

About 50 cities will carry out trials integrating industry and education over the next five years, and a number of industries with distinctive regional characteristics that integrate industry and education will be built, according to a new plan.

The country will also cultivate more than 10,000 enterprises under a pilot program during the period, according to the plan.

The National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Education and four other departments recently unveiled the plan, which is aimed at promoting the development of education, talent, industry and high-quality economic growth.

The plan was reviewed and passed along with a number of guidelines and plans in July at the ninth meeting of the Central Committee for Deepening Overall Reform presided by President Xi Jinping.

Priority should be given to improving development plans and the allocation of resources, advancing reforms in talent cultivation and lowering institutional transaction costs, according to the plan.

The plan also stressed the full implementation of fiscal and education policy incentives.

Cai Jian, Party secretary of the Department of Microelectronics and Nanoelectronics of Tsinghua University, said the department has been actively integrating what the industry needs with its talent cultivation.

In May, the department started to build an innovation platform fostering integration between industry and education to cultivate talent for the chip industry, Cai said.

"The platform has started cooperation with leading chip enterprises as well as startups. It offers academic education from undergraduate to doctoral degrees as well as nonacademic training to enterprise employees," he said.

It will also support putting the new technology into commercial use and build some startups, he added.

Huang Hulin, deputy general manager of Qingdao Haiwan Group, a State-owned chemical company in Qingdao, Shandong province, said the company built its affiliated vocational school in 1984 to cultivate the talent it needed.

The school, Qingdao Petrochemical Advanced Technical School, has more than 2,000 secondary vocational students majoring mainly in petrochemicals, chemical engineering, environmental protection and automation, Huang said.

"The reason for us to keep the school running so long is that it can help train the skilled workers we need, and it can also be used to train employees at the company," he said.

To help students learn knowledge firsthand, some technicians and skilled workers teach part-time at the school. In addition, teachers learn at the company and students also have many opportunities to intern there or at other companies and develop practical skills, Huang explained.

"We have an employment rate of almost 100 percent," he said. "The students at our school have at least four job offers before they graduate, and they can make, on average, more than 4,000 yuan ($578) for their first job, a pretty decent salary in Shandong."

Xia Baoshan-president of Beijing Automotive Technician Institute, affiliated to BAIC Group-said the teaching materials at the school are based on real examples at the company, so that the school can better train talent.

There are also many exclusive classes to meet the special needs of car enterprises, and all students in the classes are co-trained by the school and those companies so that they are equipped with certain skills to work for those companies after graduation, he said.

"When the students enroll in the class, they are guaranteed a job at certain car enterprises as long as they graduate."