[Guangming Times Review]
Author: Xiong Bingqi (Dean of 21st Century Education Research Institute)
Recently, the Ministry of Education and other departments jointly issued the newly revised Regulations on the Management of Students’ Internship in Vocational Schools (hereinafter referred to as the Regulations), clarifying that "internships should not be arranged across major categories", "students should not be arranged to engage in simple repetitive work", "students should not be arranged to engage in manual labor of Grade III intensity or above or other internships harmful to physical and mental health" and "it is strictly forbidden to organize internships illegally for profit".
As early as 2016, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance and other five departments jointly issued the Regulations on the Management of Students’ Internship in Vocational Schools, which played an important role in regulating students’ internship in vocational schools. However, in recent years, there are still some problems in some areas, such as organizing students to work in the production line of enterprises in the name of internship, arranging overtime and night shift, compulsory internship, fee-based internship, and mismatch of internship majors.
The compulsory practice of earning "headcount fee" is nominally "school-enterprise cooperation", and the essence is to treat students as cheap labor. Schools charge management fees by exporting labor services to enterprises, while enterprises fill the labor shortage with student labor services. Most of the enterprises that vocational colleges force students to practice are low-end labor-intensive enterprises. It is difficult for these enterprises to recruit workers through the labor market and turn to schools for "cooperation" to obtain cheap labor. Students are arranged to do assembly line repetitive work unrelated to their majors, which not only infringes on students’ rights, but also misleads students’ understanding of vocational education and skilled personnel. Many students have not learned skills and think that skilled personnel have no way out. The existence of this kind of low-end practice actually hinders the improvement of vocational education quality and affects the image of vocational education.
The revised "Regulations" focus on curbing the compulsory practice of earning "headcount fee", protecting students’ legal rights and improving the quality of practice. To implement the Regulations, in addition to improving the accountability mechanism, we must seriously blame the off-campus vocational colleges that illegally organize internships, we must also strengthen investment in vocational colleges, eliminate backward enterprises that have been unable to recruit laborers from the labor market, and promote the establishment of a modern vocational college system to carry out high-quality integration of production and education.
For the illegal organization of student internships in vocational colleges, most of the current treatments are just to stop illegal internships, without further treatment and accountability. In this regard, we should increase the punishment, blacklist the schools that illegally organize students’ internships, disclose the school’s illegal behaviors to the public, reduce its enrollment plan or even revoke its qualifications for running schools.
In addition to the relevant personnel profiting from it, there are also vocational colleges that illegally organize student internships as a way to obtain school funds and improve teachers’ treatment. In recent years, some intermediaries have also seen this demand in vocational colleges and intervened to organize student internships as business opportunities. Regarding the participation of intermediary agencies in students’ internships, the Regulations specify that the tripartite agreement on internships must be signed by vocational schools, internship units and students, and reiterate that students’ internships cannot be organized, arranged and managed through intermediaries or paid agents. The warning significance of this is that institutions that enter the field of vocational education can’t make profits and take organizing student internships as a business. The school’s self-"labor intermediation" is more worthy of attention. In this regard, it is necessary to increase investment in vocational colleges, improve the treatment of vocational school teachers, and let schools concentrate on running schools.
Practice is an important link in the practical teaching of vocational school students, which is not only a necessary way for professional learning and technical skills training, but also an important way to temper the will quality, get familiar with the post in advance and guide integration into society. In order to achieve the goal of practice teaching, it is necessary to eliminate the practice of working in the post.
In the final analysis, organizing students’ internships in vocational colleges is an educational matter. To avoid vocational schools sending students to work in enterprises that do not have internship conditions, it is necessary to play the role of the school professors’ committee, which makes internship teaching plans, selects qualified internship enterprises, designs internship teaching contents, supervises the internship teaching process and evaluates the internship teaching effect. This is the key to establish a modern vocational college system and to improve the quality of running a vocational college.
Guangming Daily (January 27, 2022, 02 edition)