The Study On The Change Of School-enterprise Cooperation Policy In China's Vocational Education

The "cross-border" attribute of vocational education has promoted the school-enterprise cooperation policy as a representative policy in the field of vocational education in China after the reform and opening up.The effectiveness and trend of school-enterprise cooperation policy changes have a crucial impact on the stability and improvement of the level of vocational education in China.Reviewing and summing up the policy change as an opportunity,accurately understanding and systematically grasping the dynamic mechanism of policy change is the basic premise for realizing the rational and orderly change of the school-enterprise cooperation policy of vocational education.This study takes “the policy of school-enterprise cooperation and its change course of vocational education in China since the reform and opening up” as the research object,follows the logical path of combining descriptive research,interpretative research and normative research,adheres to the synergy of macro-level methodology and micro-level analytical methods,and analyzes and demonstrates the historical stage,main characteristics,dynamic mechanism and its working conditions,and future optimization path of policy changes.In the four decades after the reform and opening up,the national policy practice presented three "paradigms" in different periods: from the administrative promotion of the school-enterprise symbiosis under the overall control of the state before the end of the last century,to the reform of the school-joint enterprise with the adjustment of the vocational education structure in the first decade of this century,and then to the exploration of national system with the integration of school-enterprise integration and multi-dimensional synergy as its core.Different policy paradigms have significant differences in how to view the role of both schools and enterprises,and how to stabilize and close school-enterprise cooperation.Based on the above policy paradigm changes,the changes in the school-enterprise cooperation policy of vocational education in China can be divided into three stages,namely,the stage of "school-attached industries and enterprises,one-way symbiosis" from 1978 to 1998,the stage of "school-led and enterprises-assisted,promoted schools to joint enterprises" from 1998 to 2010,the "school and enterprise-led jointly,pluralistic governance" stage from 2010 to the present.The national policies in different historical stages show the distinct evolutionary features in three dimensions,in terms of category,form,factor composition and intensity of change.The specific manifestations include: from programmatic and stipulated policy provisions to systematic and specialized policy systems,from authoritative command and system change tools to the coordinated application of multi-policy tools,from the gradual adjustment after the transformation of the dependency and symbiotic paradigm to the new paradigm of dual master synergy.The emergence and adjustment of the policy is,in the final analysis,the choice made by the government department as a policy maker.The government's motivation to make a choice depends on the pressure mechanism of its environment on the one hand and its own dynamic mechanism on the other.For a long time,different scholars have started from the above two types of mechanisms,forming a path of policy change between social centralism and national centralism.This study comprehensively uses multi-disciplinary theories such as policy network,policy(government)process and new institutionalism,based on the dialectical perspective of“institution-field-actor”,and constructs the “field-learning” interpretation analysis framework for policy change.The framework establishes “policy formulation and implementation field” and “the policy learning of the central government's functional department” as the core analytical variables,and strives to systematically explore the dynamic mechanism of change and its working conditions,from the pressure mechanism of the central government's vocational education management department and its intitative mechanism,so as to realize the organic integration of the two different interpretation and analysis paths of National Centralism and Social Centralism.By applying this framework,this study finds that under the combined effect of the structural factors of the socio-political and economic system and the mobilization factors of the actors,various key actors(public and private organizations),such as governments,industry sectors,enterprises,vocational schools,form the specific interaction relationships with each other,due to the interdependence of resources such as “authority”,“funds”,“information”,“organization”,and “legality”,specific interactions are formed.The above-mentioned interaction relationships constitute respectively the "government-government" and "government-industry" policy formulation fileds,and the “central-local” and “enterprise-school” policy implementation fields.The “government-government” policy formulation field involves the collaborative decision-making relationship between the education administrative department and other functional departments within the State Council system.The “government-industry” policy formulation field involves the hierarchical decision-making or cooperative governance relationship between the vocational education management department of the State Council(mainly the education administrative department)and the national industry management intermediary.The operation and reform of the above-mentioned policy formulation fields are mainly influenced by the national administrative and social governance system.The“central-local” implementation field involves the financial and administrative powerpower relations between the central government(the State Council and its vocational education management departments)and local governments.The operation and reform of the above-mentioned policy implementation fields are mainly affected by the state system,such as tax distribution,financial payment,industrial economy,education administration,and labor employment.The continuous operation and profound changes in the policy formulation and implementation fields have specific pressures on the decision-making and behavior of the central government's functional departments,and lead to continuous changes in the school-enterprise cooperation policies in the category,form,tool selection and even paradigm.At the same time,under the influence of specific institutional structural factors and field-related factors,the functional departments of the central government,as the “National Actor” with independent initiative and main policy-makers,will be based on their own role orientation and target preferences,and adopt policy learning strategies such as upfront evidence-based learning(pre-implementation),afterwards self-improvement learning(post-implementation)and local pilot learning(during regional implementation),so as to guide and promote continuous innovation in national policies.It is this initiative mechanism of the central government's functional departments that adds a continuous force to the school-enterprise cooperation policy process,limits the state policy practice to the central controllable scope,and ensures that it always has a strong driving force for change and development adaptability.In the choice of the optimization path of the school-enterprise cooperation policy change in vocational education in China,we must pay close attention to the above-mentioned subjective and objective conditions affecting the operation of the policy field and the policy learning of the central government's functional departments.The state should adopt the necessary system design to guide the orderly operation and benign changes of the policy field,and improve the organizational procedures for policy learning of the central functional departments.The specific countermeasures and suggestions are mainly as follows: strengthening the top-level design capabilities of the National People's Congress and the CPPCC National Committee;optimizating the organizational mechanism for coordinated inter-departmental decision-making;maintaining the effectiveness of the central financial funds' guidance and support;improving the social intermediary functions of national industry associations;pefecting the institutional supply of school-enterprise destiny community;cracking the rule of realistic bottleneck in the local pilot learning.