What are the reasons for the lack of attraction of vocational education in China?

1. Attribution theory of traditional culture: the unbearable weight of traditional culture \x0d\ The attraction of vocational education is the willingness of different social subjects to participate, recognize and accept vocational education, including the willingness of government departments to hold vocational education, the willingness and enthusiasm of enterprises to participate in vocational education, the sense of accomplishment, identity and pride of vocational education managers and vocational school teachers in the development of vocational education, and the recognition and choice willingness of students and parents to vocational education. Among them, students' and parents' recognition and willingness to choose vocational education is the concentrated expression, foundation, barometer and touchstone to measure the attractiveness of vocational education. Today, vocational schools are becoming a "helpless choice" for students and parents, and vocational education is becoming a "second-rate education". Why has vocational education lost its appeal to the public? Some people think that the reasons for the lack of attractiveness of vocational education in China include the negative influence of social dominant values and people's psychology, the weakening of the social service function and role of vocational education, and the restrictions of the current talent evaluation system on the career development of vocational college graduates. Among them, the cultural inertia formed by traditional vocational concepts and knowledge concepts is an important factor that leads to the lack of attractiveness of vocational education. [1]\x0d\ Some people think that vocational education has not reached the ideal state, "first of all, it is closely related to China's ethical humanistic and cultural traditions and the educational values of' official standard'". [2]\x0d\ Some people think that the stimulating effect of the free policy of secondary vocational schools has only a short-term effect, and it is difficult to translate it into the endogenous investment demand of farmers for secondary vocational education, because the cultural tradition of "learning to be an excellent official" is the fundamental reason why farmers do not like vocational education. The researcher asserts that "from the academic history, almost no research will deny that China's traditional culture is a very important reason why people despise vocational education", and on this basis, he thinks that in order to promote farmers to form a stable investment preference for secondary vocational education for a long time, formal educational means must be used to transform the cultural environment that is not conducive to the development of vocational education. [3]\x0d\ Some researchers believe that traditional culture has a strong mindset on people's choice of school type and occupation type, which affects the promotion of educational attraction. To improve the attraction of vocational education, we should not only stay on the analysis of superficial reasons, but also "go deep into the cultural level and cultivate a new concept of vocational education in line with the spirit of the times and a vocational education culture in line with national conditions". [4]\x0d\ The above viewpoints are different, but they all tend to regard the traditional values of "everything is inferior, only reading is high" and "learning is excellent" or the traditional concepts of "despising vocational education" and "despising manual labor" as the reasons for the lack of attraction of vocational education. This perspective of studying the attraction of vocational education is called traditional cultural attribution theory. According to the attribution theory of traditional culture, traditional culture is an important, decisive, even primary and fundamental reason that affects the attraction of vocational education. To solve the problems and difficulties faced by vocational education, the most fundamental thing is to change ideas and transform culture [①]. \x0d\ Vocational education is unattractive, thus becoming another unbearable weight of traditional culture. \x0d\ Second, is traditional culture the decisive factor for the unattractiveness of vocational education \x0d\ Only by finding the reason can we prescribe the right medicine. Does the traditional cultural attribution theory find the right reason for the lack of attraction of vocational education? \x0d\ "In the history of the world, there may not be a nation like us that wants culture to carry so many things. It is both historical and realistic, economic and political, social and personal. [5] In my opinion, traditional culture is not the main reason, the fundamental reason or the decisive factor for the lack of attractiveness of vocational education, or even the reason for the lack of attractiveness of vocational education. \x0d\ First of all, the traditional theory of cultural attribution cannot explain the glory of vocational education in China. Since the reform and opening up, vocational education has experienced a tortuous process of "recovery-development-decline-steady development", and vocational education once had unlimited scenery. In the 1980s, when I was working, I was honored to attend technical secondary schools and technical schools. According to statistics, 1990 students who receive vocational education account for half of the total number of high school students. It can be said that the traditional culture of "despising vocational education" and "despising manual labor" had no influence, let alone decided the public's choice of vocational education at that time. \x0d\ Secondly, the traditional theory of cultural attribution has been falsified by the "art test fever" that lasted for many years. Since the beginning of this century, the beauty and charm of vocational education have faded, while the art education in the same period is completely different. Take Nanjing Institute of Art as an example. In 2007, the four majors of Film and Television College enrolled more than 7,000 students, including 30 broadcasting and hosting majors and more than 2,000 students. The number of candidates has increased so fast that even the director of the admissions office didn't expect it. [6] In traditional China society, actors have a low status, and there are so-called inferior and five sons. However, there is no shadow of traditional culture behind the almost crazy "art test fever". Practice has proved that the traditional theory of cultural attribution cannot be verified by the history of China's educational development. \x0d\ It can be seen that the traditional cultural determinism is too simplistic on the issue of insufficient attraction of vocational education. The reason of social change "should not be in people's minds, should not be in people's growing understanding of eternal truth and justice, but should be in the change of production mode and exchange mode;" We should not look for it in the philosophy of the relevant era, but in the economics of the relevant era. " [7] People's feelings, willingness, recognition and acceptance of vocational education are not determined by the so-called cultural awareness and philosophical concepts, but can only be found in the economics of the relevant era, and can only be determined by the social existence of material. The traditional theory of cultural attribution about the attraction of vocational education, to paraphrase Zhu Xueqin, is "grasping the fat of culture". \x0d\ III。 The unattractive economic perspective of vocational education \x0d\ Blauger, a British economist, pointed out that people use their limited savings and even borrow money to raise funds to pay for education, just to get financial and non-financial reports in the future. [8] The public's pursuit of education level and the choice of education type are not blind, but have profound economic roots. \x0d\ It goes without saying that education at this stage is not a simple consumer product, but needs the input of the state and individuals, which is the social cost and personal cost of education. Investment in education is rewarding, which is the social and personal benefits of education, including both economic and non-economic benefits. The comparison between educational income and cost is the benefit of education. As far as individuals are concerned, education can bring benefits, and the level of education is positively related to their benefits, which has been proved by many empirical studies at home and abroad. It is found that in the United States, historically, formal education has increased people's average salary by about 10% every year. [9] In China, the longer a farmer is educated, the higher his income. [10] Among the top ten factors affecting residents' income, the change of education's weight is second only to regional and occupational factors, and its importance is rising. [1 1] The observation of social experience also shows that receiving education is the most important way for low-income residents in China to move towards a higher income class. Education is an effective way for people without family background to realize their ideal of employment, and it is also a way used by people in relatively equal. People always want to receive more education, get higher diplomas, work with dignity and live with dignity. \x0d\ However, the practical benefits of vocational education, especially secondary vocational education, are hard to realize. On the one hand, secondary vocational schools charge more than ordinary high schools, and higher vocational colleges charge more than ordinary higher education, so vocational education has no comparative advantage of personal cost; More importantly, the income from vocational education is low, which is reflected in: \x0d\( 1) receiving vocational education and becoming a skilled worker, with low wage income. According to a sample survey conducted by the Ministry of Education, the starting salary of secondary vocational school graduates is lower than 1.4 yuan, 45% students are between 1.000 yuan and 1.500 yuan, 24% students are between 1.500 yuan and 2000 yuan, and less than 60% students are above 2000 yuan. Even in the most industrialized Shanghai, more than 80% of secondary vocational school graduates' initial employment salary in 2009 only hovered between 1 1,000 yuan and 2,000 yuan, which was almost the same as the minimum monthly salary in Shanghai 1 1,654,38+0 and 20 yuan. [12] Moreover, the average income of the group receiving vocational high school and technical secondary school education is 79.76% of that of the group receiving ordinary high school education, which is far lower than that of the group receiving ordinary high school education at the same level. [13]\x0d\(2) The quality of employment is low and the rights and interests cannot be guaranteed. The status of skilled workers is not only low in salary, but also obviously different from that of "cadres" and "white-collar workers" in employment, social security, labor protection, employment training, health and safety, personal dignity, vacation, pension, medical care, housing, children's education, political participation, democratic elections, and the right to speak. Once they become skilled workers, it is difficult for them to live with dignity and dignity in the current social structure. From the incident of Foxconn jumping off a building to the "salary increase door" of Honda, Hyundai and other related enterprises, the essence of "shortage of rights and interests" and "shortage of technicians" has been highlighted. \x0d\(3) The development space is limited and the future income is low. On the one hand, at present, the overpass connecting general vocational education and the through train connecting secondary and higher vocational education are not smooth, and vocational education can easily become terminal education, which cannot satisfy students' desire to pursue higher diplomas and obtain higher income. On the other hand, the current discriminatory employment system arrangement leads to occupational inequality, and it is difficult for skilled workers to achieve upward social mobility. Due to the system inequality in the process of career mobility, although blue-collar workers have the opportunity and possibility to turn into white-collar workers, they only account for a small proportion, and the proportion of respondents who started with blue-collar jobs still flows to white-collar workers. [14] At present, the inequality in the process of occupational mobility in China has become the biggest inequality, and many policies and systems have further strengthened the disadvantages of blue-collar vulnerable groups in the process of occupational mobility. [②]\x0d\ The low income of skilled workers stems from the distribution pattern of national income in China. Due to the phenomenon that non-labor factors exploit labor factors in the process of distribution adjustment and the unilateral pursuit of "development" efficiency by government departments, since the mid-1990s, China's national income distribution has gradually tilted towards capital, enterprises and the government, resulting in extremely high income of capital owners, substantial increase in fiscal revenue and continuous decline in labor income. [15] According to a survey conducted by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the proportion of labor remuneration in GDP in China has been declining for 22 years, with a decrease of nearly 20%. China Academy of Social Sciences "China Enterprise Competitiveness Report (2007)-Profitability and Competitiveness" points out that from 1990 to 2005, the proportion of workers' remuneration to GDP decreased by 12%, while the proportion of operating balance to GDP increased from 2 1% in the same period to 29.6%. The weight of labor and laborers in the distribution process is diluted, resulting in a situation of low labor prices. \x0d\ High investment and low return directly lead to low personal income in vocational education, especially in secondary vocational education. It is not difficult to understand that before the mid-1990s, secondary vocational education was popular because it could meet the needs of graduates with high wages and high employment, while the "art test fever" continued to heat up because the income of the performing arts industry had already changed, and it had become a new social class. At present, the public's recognition of vocational education is not high, because their personal benefits are low and the public's income from vocational education is limited. As some scholars have pointed out, it is difficult to obtain due economic capital, higher social capital and higher cultural capital by receiving vocational education. [16] It is a rational choice for people to "vote with their feet" to stay away from vocational education.