Hands-On Study.(vocational education in China)(Cover story)

Byline: Duncan Hewitt

When Pan Jianfeng, a Shanghai ad consultant, was recently asked to recommend young local designers to an international agency, he sent three candidates with years of work experience. But the company decided they weren't good enough and had to import designers from the West. It's a common problem, he says; Chinese vocational grads simply haven't had good enough teaching. "Most of the lecturers don't have any real work experience," he explains. "So they can't teach useful things." When graduates do get hired, he says, "they basically have to be re-educated."

China's rapid economic expansion has exposed many frailties in its education system, especially on the vocational side. The country can't produce enough skilled workers. In part that's because it invests far more in academic than vocational programs. Though it has 1,300 vocational colleges and 14,000 high schools, these date to the days of the planned economy, with staff who are out of touch. And funding has fallen significantly since the 1990s. Partly as a result, today only 38 percent or so of China's high-school-age students attend vocational schools, well below the official target of 50 percent--the level found in Japan and South Korea. To address this deficit, last year Beijing pledged to spend almost $2 billion on 100 new vocational colleges and 1,000 high schools. And this year it started offering annual subsidies to vocational students.

But, says Prof. Cheng Fangping of the China National Institute for Educational Research, China must also change its emphasis. "Look at China's porcelain industry," he says. "It has such a long tradition, but our ceramics"--most of which are copies or kitsch--"sell for less than those made in Japan or Britain." The reason, he suggests, is that China's training is too abstract, when what's urgently required are technicians who can come up with a good idea and turn it into a marketable product.

Parts of the country are ...