China Wants Fewer College Grads, More Skilled Workers. Sound Familiar?

[Jlaw]

The general attitude in China is that its demeaning for a college graduate to become a factory worker.

in canada, the factory will not hire a college worker to do factory related job and rightfully so.

 

[Aepsilons]

My recommendation: Follow where your heart is. Your passion and endeavors will lead you to your goals. Thus it is important to be goal-oriented while pursuing your educational objectives.Be open to opportunities in Academia and/or Industry.

Good Luck !

 

[Aepsilons]

I thought China has been implementing the German dual-system in vocational education, where you are hired by a company to learn the practical skills three days a week and two days a week you go to the vocational school to acquire the theoretical skills.

We also have vocational colleges where you can obtain the Meister title (German for Master) in a two-year programme after you finished vocational school.

German craftsmen are amongst the best in the world, just compare an ordinary house built in Germany and one built in the US and you will see the visible difference. All the workers at a German car factory must at least go through a vocational school.

I do admire the Prussian style of learning. This is the same in Japanese high schools, where there is an emphasis in co-ops that can be started in the 2nd year, and continue into the 4th year. When i was high school, I had taken all the pre-requisite courses for Industrial Engineering. Starting on my 2nd year, I attended a co-op at Ishikawajima Harima Heavy Industries, continuing into my 4th year. The co-op started immediately after my school hours ; from 3:30 pm till 7:30 pm. Some of the things we were introduced to were IED (introduction to engineering design), autocad, IEED (introduction to electrical engineering design), and IEP (industrial engineering principles). It was in the IEP segment that I became interested in organizational effectiveness, theories of inter-personnel dynamics, and HR theories. So thus I oriented my interests from Industrial Engineering to Industrial & Organizational Psychology. My ability to pin point my interest and specialization -- i attribute and thank my co-op years at Ishikawajima Heavy Industries.

The networking skills we were introduced to starting in my 2nd year of high school is utterly priceless. So thus I encourage and support Co-Op opportunities early on.

 

[StarCraft_ZT]

Yes, but you can't be a doctor or lawyer with a mere college degree. The belief in China that any desk job is superior to factory worker however is misplaced, and I think rising wage of factory job as compare to low level white collar work will eventually convince Chinese of that.

This is true. Ironically, today even some immigrant workers earn more than the so called white collars in public institution in China. They just don't wanna lose face....

 

[Götterdämmerung]

@Götterdämmerung
I have been told, that in Germany they made it super hard to obtain a college degree in order to limit the amount of graduates

Not really, anyone who attained the abitur is entitled to go to university. But, certain studies are limited in placement by a so called numerus clausus (NC), e.g. medicine and law, because too many want to study these studies. It all also depend on the reputation and location of the university, large cities have stricter NC than smaller cities.

Around 45% of all high-school graduates continue to university, of which around 30% graduate.

There's a little difference for vocational education. In China, many polytechnical school/colleges adopt the 2.5+0.5(yrs) or 2+1(years) education system that means 2.5/2 yrs in school to learn theoretical skills(continuous) and 0.5/1 yrs in company to learn practical skills.

Geman have a good vocational education system that I admire.

China do the same thing in auto factories for the stable structure of talent and frankly the labor cost. But we still need to catch up for on-job training and self-learning in leisure time.

Why doesn't China extend this to all other industries? In Germany, every sector of the industry is involved in the dual-system, even a garbage collector needs to go through this system. You can see why the German economy has such a vast amount of highly skilled workers.