The Research on Several Critical Issues in the Development Of Higher Vocational Education

Based on the pondering over the establishment of a large educational concept, the implementation of “two-certificate” system, the training of “Double –Professional title teacher staff and some other issues in the development of the vocational and technical education personnel training mode, this paper discusses the issues about their content, significance and the full understanding of them in the new situation in order to promote the healthy development of higher vocational education.


Fostering a large-system education concept to train higher application-oriented professionals
To meet the challenges of the new century and to comprehensively enhance the students' qualification education, the development of higher vocational education needs the involvement of all society.Therefore, to develop higher vocation education, it is necessary to foster a large-system education concept.The higher education system is the major subsystem of the whole social system and the core of the economy-based social system.The general higher education and the higher vocational education are the two intersecting and complementary subsystems in the core system.In the era of knowledge economy, the core system is necessarily the momentum of the forward development of the overall social system and the entire social system has to operate on the core system consisting of the general higher education and the higher vocational education.Currently, the development of the higher vocational education has obviously lagged behind that of the general higher education, which has seriously affected the transferring speed from science and technology to productive forces.Therefore, in the entire social system, all the resources available for the development of the higher vocational education (talents, funds, equipments, training and practice fields etc.) should become the normal teaching conditions and means of the higher vocational colleges.We must continuously promote the improvement and development of the higher vocational education through the interaction within the entire social system.To guarantee the sustainable and healthy development of the higher vocational education, we must upgrade the sense of quality, change the concept of input, and remodel the criteria of evaluation.

Completely updating the awareness of the higher vocational education quality
Objectively speaking, our county's higher vocational education is sponsored for a short time and lack of the teaching conditions and experience; Subjectively speaking, many people despise the vocational education, and especially in the circumstances of college's expanding enrollment, they are more concerned about the quality of the higher vocational education.Therefore, we must thoroughly update the awareness of the higher vocational education quality and establish new evaluation standards.
How to treat the quality of the higher vocational education and especially the quality after the college's expanding enrollment?We should dialectically understand the issue from three aspects: Firstly, assess the quality of the higher vocational education from the needs of the whole community.Expanding enrollment will inevitably lead to the result that some candidates of lower scores are recruited, but this is only a partial problem.In a perspective view, the candidates of high scores still accounted for over 80%, and we are able to ensure the overall level of quality if we strictly control the education quality of the candidates with lower scores, "slow students" who accounted for about 20%.This is not only able to guarantee the quality level of those normally-enrolled students, but also to cultivate more talents and improve the whole quality of our nation, which is also in line with the international trend.Therefore, we should evaluate the quality of the higher vocational education from the demands of the whole community for continuously improving the quality of the whole nation.
Secondly, treat the quality of the higher vocational education in a dynamic view.The development of the higher vocational education needs expanding enrollment, meanwhile the temporarily insufficient equipments and teacher resources may lead to poor quality.But in the long run, if the scale is developed, coupled with scientific management, it will have huge benefits, which leads to the magnification of teaching inputs, in turn, it will promote the improvements of the teaching quality.Therefore we should treat the quality of the higher vocational education in a view of development, dynamic, and comprehension.
Thirdly, measure the quality of higher educational education from the perspective of practical application.We need an objective standard to evaluate the quality of higher vocational education.Evaluation of different things is bound to have different standards.The different training goals between the higher vocational education and the general higher education should lead to different quality evaluation standards.The evaluation of the students in higher vocational schools depend on their structure of knowledge, theories of subjects, and their abilities of transferring the scientific and technical achievements into productive forces.At present, our county's general higher colleges, especially the famous universities produce very small amounts of students.The undergraduates and postgraduates, elites of the college students, are far from satisfying the community's demands for qualified personnel.Therefore, we should inspect the qualification of higher vocational education from the view of practical application.

Fundamentally changing the concepts of higher vocational education inputs
In order to expand the size of higher vocational schools, we must have the most basic conditions for running schools.When the state and local governments input insufficient funds, we should use all available channels to raise money to expand the size of higher vocational colleges.In particular, the construction of logistical facilities should absorb all social investment funds to complete the structure of education system and to strengthen the functions of education.We should advocate and implement the socialization of logistical services in order that we can completely solve the "bottleneck" problems.Then the funds can be saved for the teaching equipments, the improvements and construction of practice bases, and the purchase of library materials.Only in this way can we ensure the scale, efficiency, and quality of the higher vocational education and form the virtuous circulation.

Rebuild the evaluation criteria of vocational education conditions
Vocational education can not only develop the teaching conditions in the education system, but it also must be placed in the overall social system, adhering to the principles of advantages complement and resources sharing and making full use of the education resources in the entire social system as the an important parameters to evaluate the means of the higher vocational education.This will help our country to do a great education, to break the traditional school patterns, and to cultivate the students' initiative spirits and entrepreneurial skills to serve the economic developments.Therefore, the assessment of teaching conditions of the higher vocational education mainly lies in whether the students have made use of the proper teaching software and hardware, but it doesn't matter whether the hardware belongs to the school or not.

Fully understand and implement the system of "two certificates" or "multiple certificates"
Practice has improved that implementing the system of "two certificates" or "multiple certificates" helps to upgrade the students' comprehensive qualification, abilities, and the competition for employment.From 1993, our college has launched full implementation of the "two certificate" system.But the grades of the students' certificates are at a relatively low level and far from satisfying the demands of the employers and the knowledge-based era for the qualifications of application-oriented personnel.Here we only take the National Computer Rank Examination as an example, large numbers of students only can achieve the certificates of level one or two but rarely the high-level certificates.This will certainly affect the quality of personnel training in college.More importantly, this will also affect the image of higher vocational schools.
Based on the high school education, our higher vocational education cultivates the high application-oriented personnel with the comprehensive vocational abilities and qualifications for the production, management, and service lines.It is equivalent to the LEVEL5B of International Educational Standard Classification presented by the UNESCO.Not only the certificates of the high college graduates should meet this standard, but the "two certificates" or "multi-certificate" should meet with the relevant standards.Currently, students in vocational colleges should receive a vocational qualification certificates which only the students accessing to high school education can achieve.Then it is worthy the name of "two certificates" or "multiple certificates".Therefore, our higher vocational colleges should develop corresponding institution, and meanwhile our state labor department and personnel department should also develop the eligibility criteria in line with the standard of LEVEL5B and clarify the standards in the original standard ratings that reach the LEVEL5B so that the students in higher vocational colleges clearly know how to achieve the "two certificates" or "multiple certificates".This is also in line with the international requirements.
3. Develop the teacher group of "double teacher" in light of the actual Teachers group is the key to the realization of higher vocational education programs and is also the key to the characteristics of higher vocational education.In the process of developing teacher group of "double teacher", some higher vocational college has advertised for a number of personnel as professional teachers to enrich the teacher group, which has played a positive role in developing the teacher group and improving the education quality in higher vocational colleges.In the long run, we should enhance our understanding of this approach in light of the actual situation of our county's higher vocational education.
1) "Double---professional title teachers" is not only the requirement for the teacher group but for the teaching means to reach the personnel training aims, that is, the students of higher vocational college approach the requirements of training aims through accepting the "double teachers" education.This can be completely accomplished by learning, experimenting, and practicing the expertise.This cannot be accomplished by an individual "double teacher" teacher who has mastered both theories and practice, but by the whole group of "double teachers" teachers of a higher vocational college.
2) With the rising of young teachers' professional theory level, the continual emerging of new jobs, and the advancing of technology in these jobs, it is relatively more difficult for these young teachers to reach the "double teachers" requirements in their professions.But students can fully accept the "double teachers" education through learning theories and practicing in the practice field.
3) In the provincial colleges, it is not realistic to require the teachers to be both a "lecturer" and "engineer".(accountant, economist and etc.)These teachers are only reaching the requirements of lecturers in title assessment, and far from the requirements of engineers.But this can be made up by constructing the training base and hiring the teachers who have reached the requirements of engineers.Therefore, we have to construct and perfect the training base, and improve the quality and professions of both the teachers in the courses and the instructors in the training bases so that the students can actually accept the "double teachers" education.
In short, nowadays in the study of the model of vocational personnel training, it is necessary to further reflect on the content, extension of these key issues in light of the new situations and the new requirements so that the higher vocational education can have a healthy development.