April 22, 2009
Source: china.org.cn
Vocational education in China has undergone substantial changes over the past few decades as people's education concepts have developed, according to economist and Chairman of China Vocational Education Association Cheng Siwei.
In 2008, vocational and professional institutions enrolled 11 million new students, bringing the total number of students receiving a vocational education to more than 30 million, Cheng said at the 2009 China International Vocational Education Forum. The forum opened Monday in Changsha, the capital city of central China's Hunan Province. According to Cheng, vocational training has developed very fast over the years, with more than 100 million people in all work fields participating in various training courses.
However, Cheng pointed out that China's booming vocational education is still in its primary stage. Compared with other forms of education, it is still the weakest link in the education industry due to slow infrastructure construction and system barriers. Improving the quality of education and maintaining stable development are two of the challenging tasks that lie ahead.
Statistics show that among employees working in the manufacturing and service industries, 50 percent are rural migrant workers, and less than 20 percent of those have received professional training. Furthermore, China is short of skilled workers and innovative talents, especially senior technicians. A structural adjustment in terms of talent levels is urgently needed for the industry to progress.
Cheng said vocational education is education for everyone. It plays an irreplaceable role in realizing fair education, creating jobs and improving the competitiveness of "made in China" products.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
China to spend $9.52 bln in '09 on rural projects
Apr 22, 2009
Source: Reuters
China's State Council, or cabinet, announced on Wednesday plans to spend 65 billion yuan ($9.52 billion) on rural education, health care and irrigation projects, state news agency Xinhua said.
The cabinet said the global downturn was worsening and its impact on agricultural production and the rural economy had become more pronounced as commodity demand and prices slumped, the agency said.
It was not clear if the spending was part of an earlier plan to spend 370 billion yuan on rural infrastructure.
Strong steps must be taken to boost rural employment by increasing training and financial support, the agency said. ($=6.83 yuan) (Reporting by Kirby Chien, Editing by Dean Yates)
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Information Flash 200904
1. The author and trainer of “The 7e Way of Leaders”, Mr. Lu, completed a 42.195 km marathon within 6 hours and raised SG$51,00.00 for the charity of Singapore early this year. Mr. Lu believes that if, and only if, we try our best to achieve a goal, we can do it!
We received 100% satisfaction from the participants and Company owner Mr. Meng said that they would like to collaborate more with ULOM on training programmes in the future.
3. The economic crisis is affecting the business environment. ULOM is planning a series of stress relieving programmes for professionals. For details, please call us at (86) 21 5079 3962 or please pay attention to our Information Flash.
4. ULOM secured a one-year business management services contract with R&M China Co., Ltd. in March 2009. ULOM will be responsible for the major marketing and administrative work of R&M China Co., Ltd.
5. ULOM Management Consultancy (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. participated in the Corporate Image & Product Trade Forum organized by the of Shanghai Pudong District Government on 5th March 2009. During the forum, a few entrepreneurs enquired about staff training plans with ULOM.
6. ULOM was elected to be a member of Shanghai Public Relation Association in February 2009.
2. ULOM tailor made and implemented the “Customer Services” training programme for Shanghai Tongzi Automotive Service Co., Ltd.
We received 100% satisfaction from the participants and Company owner Mr. Meng said that they would like to collaborate more with ULOM on training programmes in the future.3. The economic crisis is affecting the business environment. ULOM is planning a series of stress relieving programmes for professionals. For details, please call us at (86) 21 5079 3962 or please pay attention to our Information Flash.
4. ULOM secured a one-year business management services contract with R&M China Co., Ltd. in March 2009. ULOM will be responsible for the major marketing and administrative work of R&M China Co., Ltd.
5. ULOM Management Consultancy (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. participated in the Corporate Image & Product Trade Forum organized by the of Shanghai Pudong District Government on 5th March 2009. During the forum, a few entrepreneurs enquired about staff training plans with ULOM.
6. ULOM was elected to be a member of Shanghai Public Relation Association in February 2009.
Friday, April 10, 2009
China’s graduates emerge to a harsher world
April 9 2009
Source: The Financial Times
Getting a job is no easy task anywhere in the world right now and China is no exception, despite the fact that the economy is still growing.
Therefore, many of the more than 6m young people who are due to graduate from university in China this June are becoming nervous.
“I don’t know where I am going to go three months from now,” says Zhang Ming, an undergraduate at China Youth University for Political Sciences.
Set to finish an international trade degree this summer, he took entry exams for a post-graduate law studies programme, hoping for a chance to delay his entry to the job market beyond the current trough.
But he missed the required mark by a few points.
Now he will be forced to move out of relatively affordable student housing and lose a monthly stipend – and is clueless as to his future.
The government is as worried as the students themselves. Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security, has spoken of a “grave” situation and named the unemployment threat to fresh graduates as his most serious concern beside the growing army of jobless migrant workers.
None of this, however, is a surprise. Education experts say the current problems are only partly the result of the global financial crisis. They are also rooted in structural distortions stemming from failed education policies.
“One factor is that about a decade ago, we started aggressively recruiting more students into university,” says Zhao Beiping who has been giving counselling at the student career centre at Wuhan University of Technology for decades.
He observes that this has not been matched by efforts to enhance the quality of university education, nor by training to make students fitter for the job market.
“For many students, getting into university is their goal in life, and they don’t think beyond that, and unfortunately it’s the same problem with the parents,” he says, adding that “our country’s university education and human resources training are not suited to the needs of a market economy.”
In more specific terms, graduates are often well-trained in theoretical subjects but lack the practical skills and thinking wanted by employers.
Job expectations among graduates are also a gross mismatch to what is available.
“Graduates are fixated on getting jobs as civil servants, in foreign companies or big state-owned companies, and in the big cities – in short, jobs which, they have been led to believe, are the best-paid and safest,” says Mr Zhao.
As exports have plunged over the past few months, companies in the export-dependent coastal cities have become extremely cautious about hiring new staff.
The state cannot make up for that gap – in civil service exams late last year, there were only 1.3 jobs on offer for every 100 applicants.
Teachers also complain that China’s one-child policy and the rapid increase of incomes in many urban families has produced a generation that sorely lacks qualities such as the ability, treasured by older Chinese, to “eat bitterness”, or survive through hard times without complaining.
“We are talking about spoiled young people here,” said a teacher at Xiamen University who asked not to be named.
Surveys conducted by several universities indicate that students – forced to recognise reality – are starting to adjust their expectations.
While graduates at Wuhan University of Technology used to ask for starting salaries of Rmb2,000 to Rmb4,000 a month three years ago, many will now settle for Rmb1,800.
But these are just average numbers, and there is much less of a change in attitude at leading national institutions such as Peking University, Tsinghua University or Fudan University.
Graduates from relatively well-off families with household registrations in the capital or other wealthy cities, such as Shanghai or Guangzhou, are also much less inclined to lower their expectations.
That leaves those such as Mr Zhang, whose home is in Guizhou, one of China’s poorest provinces.
“I want to work in an export enterprise somewhere in south-east China,” he says.
“But it looks like that might not work out right away, so maybe I need to go to some more backward place to work first.”
University administrations are eager to use the current crisis to give their students a better sense of what they need to prepare for when they graduate.
As a result, they are starting more counselling programmes. The government, meanwhile, urges local authorities and schools to hold more job fairs.
But that does not change the fact that there are too few jobs in the first place.
Graduates, such as Mr Zhang, from less well-known institutions and with what education experts refer to as “fashionable degrees” are losing out.
He went to job fairs held at Peking University and Tsinghua University last month. “But the morning was reserved for their own students, and by noon, there was almost nothing left,” he says.
Source: The Financial Times
Getting a job is no easy task anywhere in the world right now and China is no exception, despite the fact that the economy is still growing.
Therefore, many of the more than 6m young people who are due to graduate from university in China this June are becoming nervous.
“I don’t know where I am going to go three months from now,” says Zhang Ming, an undergraduate at China Youth University for Political Sciences.
Set to finish an international trade degree this summer, he took entry exams for a post-graduate law studies programme, hoping for a chance to delay his entry to the job market beyond the current trough.
But he missed the required mark by a few points.
Now he will be forced to move out of relatively affordable student housing and lose a monthly stipend – and is clueless as to his future.
The government is as worried as the students themselves. Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security, has spoken of a “grave” situation and named the unemployment threat to fresh graduates as his most serious concern beside the growing army of jobless migrant workers.
None of this, however, is a surprise. Education experts say the current problems are only partly the result of the global financial crisis. They are also rooted in structural distortions stemming from failed education policies.
“One factor is that about a decade ago, we started aggressively recruiting more students into university,” says Zhao Beiping who has been giving counselling at the student career centre at Wuhan University of Technology for decades.
He observes that this has not been matched by efforts to enhance the quality of university education, nor by training to make students fitter for the job market.
“For many students, getting into university is their goal in life, and they don’t think beyond that, and unfortunately it’s the same problem with the parents,” he says, adding that “our country’s university education and human resources training are not suited to the needs of a market economy.”
In more specific terms, graduates are often well-trained in theoretical subjects but lack the practical skills and thinking wanted by employers.
Job expectations among graduates are also a gross mismatch to what is available.
“Graduates are fixated on getting jobs as civil servants, in foreign companies or big state-owned companies, and in the big cities – in short, jobs which, they have been led to believe, are the best-paid and safest,” says Mr Zhao.
As exports have plunged over the past few months, companies in the export-dependent coastal cities have become extremely cautious about hiring new staff.
The state cannot make up for that gap – in civil service exams late last year, there were only 1.3 jobs on offer for every 100 applicants.
Teachers also complain that China’s one-child policy and the rapid increase of incomes in many urban families has produced a generation that sorely lacks qualities such as the ability, treasured by older Chinese, to “eat bitterness”, or survive through hard times without complaining.
“We are talking about spoiled young people here,” said a teacher at Xiamen University who asked not to be named.
Surveys conducted by several universities indicate that students – forced to recognise reality – are starting to adjust their expectations.
While graduates at Wuhan University of Technology used to ask for starting salaries of Rmb2,000 to Rmb4,000 a month three years ago, many will now settle for Rmb1,800.
But these are just average numbers, and there is much less of a change in attitude at leading national institutions such as Peking University, Tsinghua University or Fudan University.
Graduates from relatively well-off families with household registrations in the capital or other wealthy cities, such as Shanghai or Guangzhou, are also much less inclined to lower their expectations.
That leaves those such as Mr Zhang, whose home is in Guizhou, one of China’s poorest provinces.
“I want to work in an export enterprise somewhere in south-east China,” he says.
“But it looks like that might not work out right away, so maybe I need to go to some more backward place to work first.”
University administrations are eager to use the current crisis to give their students a better sense of what they need to prepare for when they graduate.
As a result, they are starting more counselling programmes. The government, meanwhile, urges local authorities and schools to hold more job fairs.
But that does not change the fact that there are too few jobs in the first place.
Graduates, such as Mr Zhang, from less well-known institutions and with what education experts refer to as “fashionable degrees” are losing out.
He went to job fairs held at Peking University and Tsinghua University last month. “But the morning was reserved for their own students, and by noon, there was almost nothing left,” he says.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Plants (3)
Four small plants convey our hope of better times to come. Wish them would flourish and have their own living space in such a small flowerpot.Monday, March 30, 2009
Chinese Vice President stresses innovation in training young cadres
March 30, 2009
Source: Xinhua
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping Monday called for innovation in nurturing and selecting young cadres.
"The training and selecting young cadres is of great importance for the lasting stability of the Party and the state," said Xi at a national panel discussion on the issue.
Xi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, called on Party committees at all levels to explore new ways to ensure the healthy growth of a generation of young cadres.
He said the work of training and selecting of young cadres deserved continuous attention, given the succession of old cadres by the new and their cooperation was an unending process.
He urged Party committees to educate young cadres with Marxist theories to improve their theoretical attainment.
"The education of ideal and conviction is a fundamental task," he said. The young cadres should be guided and helped in fortifying their conviction in socialism with Chinese characteristics.
He also called for Party committees to enhance the education of Party spirit among young cadres and strengthen the cultivation of their morality, stressing the education of loyalty and resisting corruption.
Xi said young cadres should be encouraged to temper themselves at the grass-roots level positions.
"The promising ones should be sent to the places featuring harsh conditions."
Source: Xinhua
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping Monday called for innovation in nurturing and selecting young cadres.
"The training and selecting young cadres is of great importance for the lasting stability of the Party and the state," said Xi at a national panel discussion on the issue.
Xi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, called on Party committees at all levels to explore new ways to ensure the healthy growth of a generation of young cadres.
He said the work of training and selecting of young cadres deserved continuous attention, given the succession of old cadres by the new and their cooperation was an unending process.
He urged Party committees to educate young cadres with Marxist theories to improve their theoretical attainment.
"The education of ideal and conviction is a fundamental task," he said. The young cadres should be guided and helped in fortifying their conviction in socialism with Chinese characteristics.
He also called for Party committees to enhance the education of Party spirit among young cadres and strengthen the cultivation of their morality, stressing the education of loyalty and resisting corruption.
Xi said young cadres should be encouraged to temper themselves at the grass-roots level positions.
"The promising ones should be sent to the places featuring harsh conditions."
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