Adapting to the needs of labor skill iteration and developing vocational undergraduate course
With the in-depth promotion of "Made in China 2025", intelligent equipment and machines are widely used, affecting all aspects of research and development, production, sales, management and service, violently impacting and reshaping the structure and order of the original working world. However, "machine on duty" does not mean that "human beings are laid off", and jobs that many people are qualified for still exist. Most of these jobs show the characteristics of complexity, teamwork and multi-type. It can be seen that technology substitution forces workers who are traditionally engaged in regular and manual labor to enter the field of irregular and intelligent labor. It puts forward new and higher requirements for the ability structure of the labor force and triggers a new round of iteration of labor skills. It is necessary for vocational education to further enhance its adaptability and service ability, and to steadily develop vocational undergraduate education.
Demand: improve the innovation quality and high-level ability of the labor force
At present, China is at the key node of transforming the economic development mode and optimizing the economic structure, and the economic development has shifted from focusing on scale and speed to focusing on quality and efficiency. Under the tide of industrial revolution and technological change, the path to improve the quality of products and services no longer depends only on the breakthrough of key principles or laws at the front end of the production process, but tends to gradual innovation at the back end and close to industrialization. This means that innovation is no longer just a matter for scientists and engineers, and everyone in the production chain can engage in creative work.
Innovative literacy is the necessary ability and internal basis for carrying out innovative activities. Therefore, in order to promote the leap-forward development of China’s technology and highlight people’s unique advantages and dominant position compared with machines, skilled personnel must not only master solid professional knowledge and superb operational skills, but also have innovative literacy. By absorbing and improving existing technologies and processes, they can transform practical exploration and experience in the production line into physical products or services for practical application, and finally realize process innovation, product creation and service upgrade.
In the era of intelligence, the form of work organization has changed in essence, from the original bureaucratic work system to a flat and network work system, the complexity and uncertainty of work have increased, the degree of division of work has deepened, and the production mode has changed from standardized large-scale production to personalized fine production. This puts forward "high-level" requirements for the ability structure of employees. This "high-level" is mainly manifested in the great improvement of the complexity of work process, the degree of labor innovation, the degree of technical accuracy and the degree of domain complexity. To meet the above-mentioned "high-level" requirements, high-level ability is needed as the core support.
Higher-order ability is a dynamic concept, and its connotation will constantly change with the changes of the times and the development of technology. In the current era of intelligence, high-level ability is cross-border, universal and universal, which can not be imitated or replaced by artificial intelligence in a short time. It mainly covers a series of abilities such as judgment and integration ability, analysis and decision-making ability, overall management ability, teamwork and communication ability, multi-dimensional migration ability and cross-border thinking ability. Skilled talents with advanced abilities can flexibly analyze, transform and apply existing knowledge and skills to cope with increasingly complex work situations and various unexpected problems.
To sum up, under the background of intelligence, the iteration of labor skills is moving towards the further improvement of innovative quality and high-order ability, and high-skilled innovative talents have become an urgently needed talent type in the era of artificial intelligence.
Challenge: the lack of high-level technical and technical talents restricts industrial development
The rapid development of China’s economy and society clearly sends a signal that the industry urgently needs highly skilled and innovative talents with complex technical knowledge. But the reality is that the serious shortage of high-level technical talents has become a "bottleneck" problem that restricts China’s national strength improvement and industrial development under the new normal.
According to the statistical data analysis of China Human Resources Market Information Monitoring Center in the second quarter of 2020, there is a big demand gap between professional and technical personnel and senior skilled personnel in China’s labor market, and the demand ratio of each technical level or professional title is greater than 1. The skill level of the existing labor force is not fully qualified for the needs of modern posts, and there are still a series of problems such as the level mismatch and type mismatch of labor skills while the number of high-skilled workers is generally insufficient.
Exploring the reasons for the mismatch between the supply and demand of labor skills in China from the source lies in the poor connection between the education chain and the industrial chain, and it is difficult for the existing education supply to cultivate high-skilled innovative talents needed for economic transformation and upgrading. As far as higher vocational education is concerned, although it attaches importance to the cultivation of talents’ high-level professional skills and professional abilities, it lacks the cultivation of their high-level abilities and innovative qualities. The limitation of running a school makes it difficult for it to undertake the important task of cultivating highly skilled and innovative talents. In order to fill the talent vacancy, some enterprises can usually only promote the outstanding talents who have worked in vocational colleges for five or six years, and the efficiency and speed of talent supply are obviously difficult to meet the trend swept by intelligence.
As far as applied undergraduate education is concerned, its sources are mainly divided into two categories, one is transformed from ordinary undergraduate colleges. This kind of application-oriented undergraduate education has many common genes and inertia, and still follows the discipline development system and the traditional elitist talent training mode. In the process of talent training, theoretical deduction and application are emphasized, while internship and training are ignored. This is actually divorced from the training law of skilled talents. Therefore, this kind of applied undergraduate has the dilemma of "transgenic rejection", and it is difficult for the trained talents to reach a high-level skill level, with innovative thinking but not focusing on technological innovation. Another type of application-oriented undergraduate course is upgraded from local colleges at the junior college level in the early 21st century. This kind of newly-built undergraduate colleges are rooted in the soil of vocational education from beginning to end, and inherit the genes of technical and technical personnel training, so they can well adapt to the development needs of regional economy and society and achieve remarkable results in educating people. However, due to its small proportion and limited professional coverage, it is impossible to bridge the contradiction between supply and demand of skilled talents.
The existing education supply is seriously insufficient, resulting in the structural contradiction between labor supply and demand. Therefore, to fundamentally solve this contradiction, we should start from the source of talent training, develop different kinds of education at the same level as ordinary undergraduate courses, and ensure that the trained talents have both "professional attributes" (implicit skill level, professional ability, etc.) and "higher attributes" (implicit high-level ability, innovative literacy, etc.), so as to meet the needs of the industry and realize the systematic development of vocational education.
Thinking: The development of vocational education at undergraduate level should continue the vocational education gene.
Setting up vocational education at undergraduate level is an inevitable choice to match the structure of higher education and industrial structure under the background of intelligence. How to develop vocational undergraduate course has become an urgent problem to be considered and solved.
The construction of application-oriented undergraduate education in China provides valuable experience for exploring the development of vocational undergraduate education, that is, it is the "original gene" that supports the sustainable development of vocational education at all levels rather than "transgenic". As the result of vocational education extending to undergraduate level, the development path of vocational undergraduate education is not "reinvented" but "extended". To realize the long-term development of vocational undergraduate education, we must always maintain the attributes and orientation of vocational education.
Based on the basic orientation of vocational education gene, this paper puts forward the development ideas of vocational undergraduate education as follows: in the aspect of running schools, we should expand the scale and broaden the coverage, and choose higher vocational colleges with higher quality and obvious characteristics; In terms of curriculum construction, we should break the subject curriculum model, form a practice-oriented vocational education curriculum model, and highlight practical teaching; In terms of training content, we should follow the requirements of professional ability in work practice, pay attention to work-oriented technological innovation, and pay attention to the improvement of students’ innovative literacy and higher-level ability; In the aspect of training mode, adhere to the action-oriented training mode, improve the work-based learning system, advocate and deepen the integration of production and education, school-enterprise cooperation, and strengthen the alliance with industrial colleges, industrial universities and industrial research institutes.
(Author: Kuang Ying is a professor at the Institute of Vocational Education and Adult Education of East China Normal University, and Li Qi is a master student at the Institute of Vocational Education and Adult Education of East China Normal University)
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