Forty years ago China decided to invest in training millions of engineers who have turned out Be your ace in the hole in the AI race. In fact, it is the country with the highest number of STEM graduates in the world and while ups its ante on doctoratesboth the government of the Asian giant and generation Z have begun to pay attention to vocational training.
The graduate bubble. The Chinese Ministry of Education counted in November 2024 that in 2025 there would be a historic number of graduates: 12.22 million, how to collect the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
With this panorama, the competition is fierce, also taking into account that The United States has made visas more difficult for those who decide to migrate. The Chinese Ministry of Education is offering different measures and support systems in the form of recruitment events in key regions and industries to alleviate unemployment among university students. It doesn’t seem enough.
Labor demand changes. On the other hand, companies are changing their needs: official data show that the demand for people with a university degree fell from 20.3% to 17.4% last year. However, the number of those who had completed vocational training rose from 8.5 to 11%. The FP is so sought after that this segment was the one that had the highest rate of job offers in 2024.
It is already a matter of state. Not only is it a labor market issue, but it is also a guideline that points towards a “Strong Educational Nation.” That is the objective of new state plan in education (2024 – 2035): China makes vocational training a state priority, committing to concrete measures such as more funding, improvements in facilities and the development of a modern skills system.
In short, vocational training has the same importance as academic training to sustain technological self-sufficiency. As already happened in Europein China they are also stopping stigmatizing VET as an alternative for students with fewer resources or worse grades.
The return on investment is no longer profitable. Sixth Tone picks up the testimonies of several young people and their experiences such as that of Ke Chenxi, who scored high enough on the gaokao (something like the PAU) to go to university, but he chose to enroll in a vocational school. Yes, economic and family circumstances were partly to blame, but also because the Wuhan Vocational Institute program offered shorter early childhood education courses, intensive internships, and faster incorporation into the labor market.
Associate Professor of Shanghai Fudan University Gao Shanchuan speaks directly from the “income effect”, that is, from the belief that by going to university you will have a higher salary: “What is changing is that young people are beginning to evaluate education in a more pragmatic way. If vocational training leads to stable jobs and a reasonable income, their social prestige will improve over time.” Zhuo Ping is a teacher at Ke School and is clear that although VET is not going to replace universities, it does encourage students to choose according to their aptitudes and not just prestige: “We went from focusing solely on credentials to more substantially recognizing ability.”
Wuhan is the epicenter of change. The Chinese city is a true higher education cluster, with more than 80 universities and a strong weight of technical careers. But also where VET is emerging: those who obtain their degree in trades already find work as quickly as their university counterparts, with a successful access rate to the labor market of over 98% in some institutions. And they do so by accessing the labor market faster and with more experience.
That VET centers in Wuhan work closely with local companies to design training according to the needs of the industry and not according to rigid and theoretical itineraries will surely help. In fact, in Sixth Tone they pick up the statements of a human resources supervisor, who experiments with live reality, highlighting their good performance, adaptation and skill, although they have pending issues such as teamwork.
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