By Wang Weijin & Tang Lixia, Research Team on “Fostering New Growth Drivers for China’s Economic Transformation”, DRC

Research Report, No.74, 2017 (Total 5149) 2017-07-06

Abstract: The Chinese government is actively promoting vocational education, whereas the enterprises and social entities are not that active about its development. Therefore, this paper illustrates the experience of German dual vocational education system which can stimulate the enthusiasm of governments, enterprises and social entities. It holds that the dual vocational education system can bring benefits to governments, enterprises and students. The German government has made institutional arrangements to stimulate the enthusiasm of enterprises and social entities. For instance, the cooperation framework can fully represent and integrate the interests of the above-mentioned three sides; these arrangements can provide vocational qualification certificates to the three sides in a smooth and projected manner; these arrangements can provide appropriate guidance in terms of fiscal and taxation policies for enterprises to shoulder less responsibilities; these arrangements can provide proper career development channels for students who do not have to worry about their employment after graduation. China could draw the following enlightenments from Germany. Although China and Germany have different social systems, many of Germany’s approaches to stimulate the enthusiasm of enterprises can be used in China. In the labor market, technicians have flexible work hours and their payment is relative low. In such a context, it is a major issue for us to study how to stimulate the enthusiasm of families to invest in vocational education sector. When there are no related policies to refer to, we could create some converging points of interests for the three sides through policy guidance and we could consider expanding the scale of opening up to Germany in terms of vocational education.

Key words: vocational education, dual system, vocational qualification, enterprises’ enthusiasm