The Opportunities and Challenges for New Entrants of

The Application Oriented University and College

Carrying Out Vocational Education in New Period in
China

* Jie Chen1
1 School of Electronic Engineering, Xi’an Aeronautical University, No.259 Xi’an West Second
Ring Road, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, 710077, China

*Corresponding author. Email: chenbinglin88888@163.com

Abstract. Most of the works of traditional manufacturing industry can be quali-

fied by the skill type talents with single skill cultivated by traditional vocational
education institutes. However, at present digital period, the digital manufactur-
ing is the main stream. It is the deep cross and fusion of the digital technology
and the traditional manufacturing techniques. Digital manufacturing works need
not only talents with crossed and fused multiple skills, but also require the tal-
ents are capable to adapt to rapid development of digital technology. The new
talents should have higher learning capacity and adaptability than traditional
talents, and must have composite vocational quality. So, the personnel training
objective of the traditional vocation education cannot meet the requirements of
the digital period. The new digital period needs vocational and general fused
undergraduate education to complete the new requirements. At present, the vo-
cational undergraduate education in our country is mainly completed by voca-
tional schools at the undergraduate level. However, their quantity is small, the
number of students in these schools is limited, and their social recognition de-
gree, students' ability to learn, innovate, adapt, cross and integrate cannot meet
the requirements of the new era and need to be continuously advanced. The new
entrants of application-oriented universities are the best choice to solve this
problem. The newly promoted application-oriented universities are mostly up-
graded from higher vocational colleges or junior colleges and with vocational
education experience. After years of undergraduate major construction, their
research ability, teacher resource strength and social recognition all achieve a
certain degree of improvement. And the number of these universities is big,
their scale is large. So, it is the urgently social and economic requirement for
these universities to carry out the training of technical and skilled talents for the
construction of digital power. And this is also the practical path to realize their
self-worth.

Keywords: Vocational undergraduate education; Newly promoted applica-

tion-oriented universities; Digital period; Compound vocational quality
© The Author(s) 2024
Y. Chen et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 2023 3rd International Conference on Modern Educational Technology
and Social Sciences (ICMETSS 2023), Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research 784,
https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-128-9_16
 The Opportunities and Challenges for New Entrants 139

1 Introduction

On October 14, 2021, General Office of the Communist Party of China and State
Council General Office print and distribute “Opinions on promoting the high-quality
development of modern vocational education”, pointing out “Application oriented
undergraduate schools are encouraged to carry out vocational undergraduate educa-
tion. According to the principle of professional matching to guide application oriented
undergraduate schools and vocational undergraduate schools attract more graduates
from secondary and higher vocational schools to apply for the examination.” This
provides policy guidance for the vocational education of new applied oriented univer-
sities. The new application-oriented universities carrying out vocational education is
also the objective need of social economic development and their self-development.
In the report to the 20th Party Congress, the general secretary Xi Jin Ping proposed
“To speed up the development of digital economy, promote the deep integration of
the digital economy and the real economy, and build the digital industry cluster with
international competitiveness.” This pointed out the direction for a period of time in
the future for the construction of our manufacturing power, that is to build digital
manufacturing power.
Deep integration of digital economy and real economy is not only the internal
needs for upgrading traditional industries and making manufacturing industry bigger
and stronger, but also the only way of high-quality development of social economy in
the new era [1].
In February 2017, the Ministry of Education issued “Manufacturing Industry Tal-
ent Development Planning Guide” jointly compiled by Ministry of Human Resources
and Social Security, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Ministry
of Education, which pointed out the imbalance between supply and demand for the
technical and skill talented person for our country social economy development need
continues to grow, and it is estimate that by 2025, in ten key areas of manufacturing,
high-quality technical talents huge gap will be up to 30 million[2]. And with the de-
velopment and further expansion of the application area of digital technology, the
phenomenon will further intensify in future.
Digital manufacturing is the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufac-
turing industry by applying new emerging technology in their domain. It is the deep
intersection and fusion of digital technology and manufacturing, and the quality re-
quirement for technical and skilled talents must be different from that of traditional
manufacturing industry. Single skill talents cultivated by traditional vocational educa-
tion can be competent for most of the tasks of traditional manufacturing. However,
digital manufacturing requires that talents are not only with multiple crossed and
fused skills, but also with the capability of adapting to fast development characteristic
of the digital technology. The higher compound vocation quality requirements have
the training goal between the vocational education and applied general undergraduate
education, and need vocational and general fused undergraduate education to com-
plete.
Application oriented undergraduate universities and colleges carrying out voca-
tional education is the urgently social and economic requirement. And there are many
140 J. Chen

international precedent examples. Such as, in Germany, Japan, Singapore, and so on,
many applied science and technology universities and colleges all carry out industry
oriented vocational education and have achieved remarkable social and economic
benefits [3-5].
This paper investigates the path of the talent cultivation of the new entrants of ap-
plication oriented undergraduate universities and colleges oriented to building digital
manufacturing power. That has significant application and academic value and prac-
tical meaning. At present, many articles have been published about vocational educa-
tion system and theory, vocational undergraduate education, and the forms of integra-
tion of industry and education [6-14]. And articles related to how to carry out voca-
tional education for the new entrants of application oriented undergraduate universi-
ties and colleges has been published very little.

2 Vocational and general fused undergraduate education

The digital economy embraces the emerging areas of national economic, including
internet, cloud computing, big data, internet of things, artificial intelligence, 5G
communication and aerospace, and so on. Digital economy is a breakthrough and
innovation to the development of traditional social economy. And it also expands and
promotes its functioned domains in digital economy period. Hence, it must be differ-
ent from the traditional industry and digital economy independent development of the
old model. It needs to build a new model on existing development models by inno-
vating and integrating their respective technologies of various national economy de-
partments. The new model needs to break the thresholds of various economy sections
and make a deeply crossed and fused development.
Digital technology is changing with each passing day. It requires technical and
skilled talents have a certain degree of innovation and learning ability to adapt to the
fast development of new technologies and new applications.
Workers in traditional industries commonly know well only one skill about their
works, but know little about other skills. Hence, they cannot meet the requirement of
the digital economy. To solve this problem, it is urgently needed to re-train the work-
ers in traditional industries to promote their ability of innovation, learning and inter-
section and fusion. And it is also needed that the vocational education system and the
higher general education system swiftly change the mode of personnel training to
output a lot of technical and skilled talents for society with higher capability of inno-
vation, learning, adapting, and multiple compound skills. The higher compound voca-
tion quality requirements have the training goal between the vocational education and
applied general undergraduate education, and need vocational and general fused un-
dergraduate education to complete.
At present, the vocational undergraduate education in our country is mainly com-
pleted by vocational schools at the undergraduate level. However, their quantity is
small, the number of students in these schools is limited, and their social recognition
degree, students' ability to learn, innovate, adapt, cross and integrate cannot meet the
requirements of the new era and need to be continuously advanced. The new entrants
 The Opportunities and Challenges for New Entrants 141

of application-oriented universities are the best choice to solve this problem. The
newly promoted application-oriented universities are mostly upgraded from higher
vocational colleges or junior colleges and with vocational education experience. After
years of undergraduate discipline construction, their research ability, teacher resource
strength and social recognition all achieve a certain degree of improvement. And there
are a lot of these universities in China and their whole scale is large. So, it is the ur-
gently social and economic requirement for these universities to carry out the training
of technical talents for the construction of digital power. And this is also the practical
path to realize their self-worth.
The essence of digital manufacturing is to upgrade the traditional manufacturing
industry by applying new emerging technologies. It is the crossed and fused applica-
tion process of the new technology in the traditional industry. There is common tech-
nical foundation for all economy department in digital economy era. The common
technical foundation is just the emerging technologies. Hence, digital manufacturing
requires the technical and skilled graduates of the schools all must master the digital
technology firstly, which is the common requirement for all economy departments in
digital era.
In addition, the application of digital technology in the process of education will
inevitably lead to the development of deeply crossed and fused vocational and general
undergraduate education. Traditional vocational education is better at practical educa-
tion than traditional general higher education and traditional general undergraduate
education is better at theoretical education than vocational education. However, the
digital technology applying in education has made the two forms education deeply
crossed and fused.
The practical education has been undergoing deeply transformation in digital era:
the apprenticeship class can be replaced by live video or can be accomplished by
remote online visiting; the experiment can be completed by simulation software.
Intelligent cloud vocational education (ICVE) providing a remote internet cloud edu-
cation platform with plenty of teaching resources has been making on-scene teaching
reality. With the development of information and intelligence, a lot of work can be
done by facing computer. As long as a reasonable way of evaluation being adopted,
the effect of the new method of practical teaching will not be compromised.
On the other hand, with the increasing abundance of online education resources,
application- oriented universities can also adopt the on-scene teaching method to
teach theory classes, and can apply theory to solve practical problems in the process
of on-scene teaching.
In summary, the profound reform of teaching resources and teaching methods is
making theoretical teaching and practical teaching deeply integrated: theory teaching
being carried out in the process of on-scene practical teaching, and practical teaching
being increasingly becoming mental work. These raise new requirements for current
higher application oriented undergraduate education system and require a vocational
and general deeply fused higher education process to implement the demands. The
new entrants of the application-oriented universities and colleges are the best choice
for these goals.
142 J. Chen

3 Conclusions

In the new times, the popularization and application of digital technology in tradition-
al industries has put forward new requirement for personnel training in higher colleg-
es and universities. The construction of a powerful country of digital manufacturing
needs a large number of high-quality compound technical and skilled talents. At the
same time, the application of emerging technologies in education has also had a
far-reaching impact, which has not only changed the form of educational resources,
but also made the process of vocational education and general higher education deep-
ly integrated. There are increasingly blurred boundaries between practical and voca-
tional education. It is the requirement of the new times for the newly established ap-
plied undergraduate colleges to carry out the undergraduate education of the integra-
tion of vocational and general higher education. It is also the best answer to the con-
tradiction faced at present and in the near future between the social talent demand and
the talent cultivated by higher education colleges and universities.

Acknowledgements

This research is supported by “the fourteenth five” educational scientific planning

project foundation of Shaanxi province with the number of SGH22Y1496.

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