(by Professor Zheng Changzhong on the Way Back to the Hotel from Zhejiang Polytechnic University of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering on May 25, 2025)
Hello, dear journalists!
I believe you gained deep impressions of Zhejiang Polytechnic University of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering during our recent visit, as it ranks among the top 10 vocational universities nationwide. As a typical representative of vocational education within China’s higher education system, vocational universities are just one component of China’s broader higher education landscape. Next, I would like to provide an overview of the development of China’s higher education.
The rapid development of China’s higher education began with the 1978 Reform and Opening-Up. At that time, China’s economic and social development needed rebuilding, and the demand for talent was extremely urgent. However, there were only 598 universities nationwide, which was far insufficient for a population of approximately 1 billion. The number of college students was just over 400,000, meaning the number of college students per 10,000 people was minimal.
With the advancement of modernization, China’s demand for high-level talent has become increasingly urgent, making the acceleration of university construction and high-level talent cultivation crucial. Since 1978, China’s higher education has witnessed significant development every decade. After more than 40 years of efforts, by the end of 2023, there were over 3,000 institutions of higher learning nationwide, with a total enrollment in higher education of nearly 48 million, including approximately 3.9 million graduate students. Currently, the gross enrollment rate in higher education exceeds 60%, allowing most school-age youth to receive university education, while those who do not pursue higher education are directed to vocational schools or employment. The popularization of higher education has laid a solid talent foundation for China’s modernization drive.
Chinese universities primarily undertake two tasks: talent cultivation and scientific research, with clear divisions of labor among different types of institutions. Take my institution, Fudan University, as an example. As a research university, it has over 30,000 graduate students and more than 10,000 undergraduates, with the number of graduate students far exceeding that of undergraduates. Such key universities focus more on graduate cultivation and basic frontier research. Most ordinary colleges and universities mainly focus on undergraduate education, emphasizing the integration of theoretical knowledge with practical applications to deliver professional talent to various industries. Vocational universities, like Zhejiang Polytechnic University of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering we visited earlier, focus more on teaching and applied research, closely aligning with industrial needs. This division of labor has enabled China’s higher education to form a hierarchical and functionally clear system.
Historically, China’s higher education has evolved from scale expansion to quality improvement. In the early days of reform and opening-up, with everything needing to be rebuilt, restoring the college entrance examination and rebuilding the university system were top priorities. In the following decades, along with rapid economic growth, the scale of higher education continued to expand, and vocational education gradually separated from general higher education to form an independent system. In recent years, China’s higher education has placed greater emphasis on connotative development and promoted classified development. The status of vocational education has been continuously elevated. In 2019, it was clarified that vocational education holds equal importance to general education, and a promotion pathway from secondary vocational education to professional master’s degrees was established.
Today, China’s higher education is not only large in scale but also optimized in structure. Different types of institutions, such as research universities, applied undergraduate institutions, and vocational universities, develop in coordination to jointly serve national development strategies. In this process, higher education has provided strong support for China’s industrial upgrading and technological innovation. At the same time, it has also helped China enhance its innovation capabilities in international competition. The international academic rankings of Chinese universities continue to improve, the scale of international students has grown continuously, and more and more foreign students come to China to study cutting-edge disciplines.
In summary, China’s higher education has achieved a leap from “elite education” to “mass education” over several decades, establishing the world’s largest talent cultivation system and training hundreds of millions of high-quality professionals. These talents are distributed across various industries and fields, serving as the mainstay of China’s economic and social development. From our visit to the vocational university to our understanding of the overall higher education landscape today, we can indeed feel China’s emphasis on education.
We will soon return to the hotel. I hope today’s introduction has provided you with a more comprehensive understanding of China’s higher education, and you are welcome to continue exchanging ideas during the following journey. Have a pleasant meal!
*The views and opinions expressed in the articles are solely those of the individual authors and do not reflect the position of the Secretariat of the Belt and Road Journalist Network.