China's integration of education and reform has entered the fast lane

On July 24th, General Secretary Xi Jinping presided over the 9th meeting of the Central Committee for Deepening Reform in Beijing, which reviewed and approved the "Implementation Plan for the Pilot Project of National Industry Education Integration Construction", deployed the pilot work of national industry education integration construction, and clearly proposed to "give full play to the role of cities as carriers, industry aggregation, and enterprise entities". Coordinating the pilot construction of national industry education integration cities, industries, and enterprises is a major strategic decision made by the Party Central Committee and the State Council to deepen the integration of industry and education. Recently, six departments including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Education issued the "Implementation Plan for the Pilot Construction of National Industry Education Integration" (hereinafter referred to as the "Implementation Plan"), marking the fast track of China's industry education integration reform.

Deepening the integration of industry and education, promoting the organic connection between the education chain, talent chain, industry chain, and innovation chain, is a key move to promote the transformation of economic development quality, efficiency, and driving force. Ou Xiaoli, Director of the Social Development Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, stated that through the integration of industry and education, we can fill the gaps in education talent and industrial innovation, which will help improve China's total factor productivity and create a new engine for promoting high-quality development.

The national pilot project for the integration of industry and education is a comprehensive and systematic reform pilot. It aims to establish a benchmark for promoting the integration of industry and education reform, provide a carrier for the deep integration of innovative elements, and conduct experiments to promote policy combination innovation through the implementation of the pilot project. "said Ou Xiaoli.

Cultivate over 10000 integrated enterprises

As one of the important tasks in promoting the supply side structural reform of human resources, deepening the integration of industry and education is a strategic measure to promote the priority development of education, talent led development, industrial innovation development, and high-quality economic development, which are interconnected, coordinated, and mutually promoted.

How to seize the historical opportunity of deepening the integration of industry and education reform and transform the social consensus of "thirst for talent" into practical actions of "investing in people" is one of the focuses of attention from all sectors of society. In this regard, the Implementation Plan specifies that the national pilot project for the integration of industry and education will be implemented over a period of about 5 years, with a pilot layout of about 50 industry education integration cities, creating a number of industry education integration industries with distinctive regional characteristics, cultivating more than 10000 industry education integration enterprises, and establishing a system of industry education integration enterprises and a combination of incentive policies.

The construction of industry education integration cities is to build the 'basic infrastructure' of industry education integration reform. Selecting 50 cities to carry out pilot projects fully equipped with corresponding software and hardware foundation support. "The relevant person in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission stated that as of the end of 2018, there were about 100 prefecture level and above cities with more than 100000 students in secondary vocational colleges and applied undergraduate colleges, and the vast majority of the more than 500 national development zones in China are also located in prefecture level and above cities. The first batch of pilot projects will select 20 cities based on economic, industrial, and population basic support conditions, educational resource aggregation, etc.

Qingdao is currently stepping onto a new stage of high-quality development, and deepening the integration of industry and education can be said to be timely, "said Xue Qingguo, member of the Standing Committee of the Qingdao Municipal Party Committee and Executive Vice Mayor. It is reported that Qingdao is one of the first pilot cities to apply for the integration of industry and education reform. The city has 80 vocational and higher vocational colleges with 200000 students. In addition, there are 41 ordinary universities with nearly 400000 students. In recent years, Qingdao has identified nine advantageous characteristic industries such as modern ocean, five emerging future industries such as new generation information technology, and six traditional pillar industries such as commerce and services in promoting the transformation of old and new driving forces, laying a solid foundation for the reform of industry education integration.

Next, Qingdao will take the opportunity of carrying out national pilot projects for the integration of industry and education to build and cultivate a group of industry education integration enterprises that play a demonstrative and leading role, create a group of industries with distinctive characteristics of industry education integration, promote the construction of a group of high-level and specialized industry education integration training bases with radiating and leading roles, and provide replicable and promotable practical experience for the whole country, "said Xue Qingguo.

Construction of innovative integration platform carrier

The Implementation Plan proposes to innovate the construction of major platform carriers for industry education integration, establish industry education integration training bases and industry education integration innovation platforms.

Chen Feng, Director of the School Planning, Construction, and Development Center of the Ministry of Education, stated that the integration of industry and education reform involves multiple entities such as the government, enterprises, schools, industries, and society, as well as multidimensional elements such as talent, intelligence, technology, capital, and management. "The integration of industry and education reform not only requires physical platform carriers to support it, but also calls for new ways of organizing productive forces, and requires the construction of an open and shared platform for mutual promotion and integration of various innovative elements.

The Outline of the 13th Five Year Plan includes "integrated development of industry and education" as a major project for educational modernization, and explicitly supports vocational education colleges to strengthen school enterprise cooperation and jointly build vocational education internship and training facilities. The Implementation Plan also clearly states that the integration of industry and education training bases should rely more on enterprise construction.

Beijing Automotive Technician College is the only vocational college under BAIC Group engaged in the cultivation of high skilled talents. In recent years, the college has explored a model of integrated education through high integration of production, teaching, and research, as well as deep cooperation between schools and enterprises, which is characterized by "recruiting as soon as possible, alternating between work and study, and connecting students and positions". Xia Baoshan, Secretary of the Party Committee and Dean of Beijing Automotive Technician College, told Economic Daily reporters that the integration of industry and education is to adhere to the principle of "matching industries to determine majors, matching industries to determine models, matching enterprises to determine student standards, matching positions to determine courses, and matching students to determine teaching methods", forming the "six commonalities" between schools and enterprises, namely, jointly setting directions, sharing resources, jointly building courses, jointly educating people, jointly evaluating, and jointly ordering.

In terms of building an industry education integration innovation platform, the National Development and Reform Commission supports some universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Xiamen University to launch pilot projects to construct a national integrated circuit industry education integration innovation platform, aiming to coordinate the construction of "Double First Class" universities and deepen the reform of industry education integration, and strengthen talent cultivation in the "bottleneck" technology field. Cai Jian, Secretary of the Party Committee and Professor of the Department of Microelectronics and Nanoelectronics at Tsinghua University, believes that the project is oriented towards the planning and layout of industrial clusters, promoting close collaboration and cooperation between universities and enterprises, and facilitating the cross penetration and integration of innovative elements in higher education and industrial development.

Exploring new mechanisms for the integration of industry and education development

Deepening the integration of industry and education reform means taking institutional innovation as the goal and platform construction as the lever, promoting the establishment of a reform promotion mechanism with cities as nodes, industries as pivot points, and enterprises as the focus, promoting the aggregation and integration of resource elements, complementary advantages, and creating new engines to support high-quality development.

The Implementation Plan points out that it is necessary to improve the innovation mechanism of higher education industry education integration, with enterprises as the important leader, universities as the important support, and key core technologies of industries as the central task.

“职业教育对电子商务发展起到了不可替代的支撑作用。”全国电子商务职业教育教学指导委员会副主任陆春阳表示，已向全行业发出了共建“行业+领先企业”产教融合生态的倡议。中国供销电子商务公司、阿里巴巴、北京祥龙资产经营公司等一批企业对此积极响应。

为推进产教融合建设试点落地实施，《实施方案》还从落实组合投融资和财政等激励政策、强化产业和教育政策牵引等方面对试点工作进行支持。

据悉，产教融合重大项目建设将获得中央预算内投资、地方政府投资、企业投资、债券融资、开发性金融和产业投资基金等多种渠道支持，试点企业兴办职业教育符合条件的投资，可按投资额30%的比例抵免当年教育费附加，经认证的产教融合型企业还将享受“金融+财政+土地+信用”组合式激励。

“相信会有更多的城市、行业、企业加入到产教融合平台的创新生态，创造出更多属于中国的产教融合道路和经验，让产教融合建设试点成为贯彻新发展理念、引领高质量发展的标志性工程。”陈锋说。

Information source: China Government website

Editor He Yang of this website/Organizing