Students learn to operate industrial robots at a wire cable manufacturing factory in Deqing county, Huzhou, Zhejiang province, in April. The Huzhou Technical College paired up with enterprises to better cater to market needs when training students. WANG SHUCHENG/FOR CHINA DAILY

Regional imbalance

However, the imbalance of resource allocation between normal and vocational education and discrimination against those with vocational training in the job market that formed in the past few decades led to some problems that are yet to be fully solved, such as the imbalanced development of vocational education in different provinces and lower competitive skills of graduates from vocational institutions.

The recruitment portal Zhaopin recently released an evaluation report on vocational colleges, ranking 300 out of the total 1,518 it surveyed as A-rated ones, considering their education quality, employment figures and collaboration with companies.

These 300 colleges are mostly in southern and eastern provinces such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong because of their well-developed secondary and tertiary industries and higher demand for skilled workers.

The vocational colleges rated B or C with weaker competitiveness are mostly located in central, northern and western provinces, including Henan, Heilongjiang and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region which have a weaker basis for the development of secondary and tertiary industries and a less friendly employment environment for vocational graduates.

In September, the China Vocational Education Association published a report on the country's vocational education development, pointing out that regional imbalance still exists because of the government's uneven investment and resource allocation. The report said vocational education resources have a "ladder-like distribution, decreasing from the eastern coastal provinces to inland areas". The vocational education gap between urban areas and the countryside is also a problem that shouldn't be overlooked, as rural areas "lack good teaching conditions and high-quality teachers".