In the Reform Era, the Chinese Government has placed great emphasis on the role of education in ensuring the economic success of individuals and of the country as a whole. While vocational and academic post-secondary qualifications are officially set at the same level, vocational education is positioned at the bottom of the educational hierarchy and suffers considerable societal prejudice. Drawing on the most recent nationwide-representative data, we investigate the labour market positioning of graduates from the two types of education in terms of their income, occupation, and level of employment precariousness. The results suggest that: (1) vocational graduates earn less than academic graduates; (2) the type of post-secondary education is significantly correlated with the likelihood of obtaining white-collar high-skilled positions; and (3) vocational graduates face greater precariousness in their jobs than academic graduates do. This study also reveals that the hierarchically stratified post-secondary system may be a source of economic inequality in the Chinese Reform Era. Moreover, it demonstrates that the visible hand of the state seems to further facilitate the reproduction of current forms of inequality that leave an increasing number of graduates in marginalised labour market positions.

While enjoying the respect and prestige in some countries, in others, despite being a significant educational sector, vocational education continues to suffer from low status and negative societal sentiments. Vocational education in China has been positioned at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, absorbing the ‘left-over’ students with ‘less good’ academic records. Addressing the research gap concerning the limited philosophical discourses about the academic/vocational divide from non-Western traditions, this paper seeks to explore the philosophical and historical heritage of the academic/vocational divide and how Confucianism may contribute to this divide and shaped the hierarchy of work in China. The Confucian literati, as ‘the privileged other’, determined the social rank of ‘those who labour with their strength’ and ‘those who labour with their minds’ through the Imperial Examination System. By using institutional logics theory, the paper explores how the legacy of these views may have negatively impacted on the standing of occupations and vocational education in contemporary Chinese society and argues that an alternative philosophical orientation is needed to counter the long-standing consequences for vocational education.

VET colleges in China are positioned at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, absorbing the ‘left-over’ students with ‘less desirable’ academic records. VET students are stereotyped as ‘stupid and lazy’ youths suffering considerable prejudice in Chinese society. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theoretical insights, this paper investigates the experiences of students in VET colleges and their teachers’ perspectives on them. I explore how teachers’ stereotyping habitus is practised in VET colleges and how it affects their students’ learning experiences. The findings demonstrate that the teachers’ pedagogic practices in class impose a designated cultural arbitrary via a hidden curriculum. The students adopted ‘passing time’ attitudes in class as a response to their teachers’ ‘misrecognition’. The paper examines how a system of unequal power relations in Chinese VET college is maintained and legitimised, which contributes to the ‘transmission’ and reproduction of the very culture that has shaped the standing of VET in Chinese society.

The Chinese government has emphasised the role of vocational education and training (VET) in promoting the rural economy. Since 2018, the government has invested heavily in setting up secondary vocational schools, training centres, specialised programmes, and courses in rural areas. This paper aimed to explore whether VET at the upper-secondary level leads to better labour market outcomes than academic education in Chinese rural areas. We also aimed to quantitively investigate the social prestige of vocational and academic education among rural residents by comparing the subjective social status level of those who graduated from upper-secondary vocational schools and general academic schools. We drew data from the China Labour-force Dynamic Survey (CLDS). A binary logit model and multinomial logit model were used in this research. The results showed that rural upper-secondary vocational graduates had an advantage over general graduates in terms of their income and employment stability. However, VET led to lower subjective social status when compared with general education. This study demonstrated that although promoting VET in rural areas could potentially benefit rural residents financially, cultural change is needed to ensure the elevation of the standing of vocational education and promote the worthiness, effectiveness, and capabilities that vocational graduates possess.

Since the start of the Reform Era in 1978, vocational education and training (VET) in China has been seen as inferior to academic routes and positioned at the bottom of the educational hierarchy. VET students are stereotyped as being ‘stupid and lazy’ and suffer considerable prejudice in Chinese society. Drawing on Foucault’s disciplinary power and Ball’s idea of performativity, this paper analyses how academically focused, exam-driven societal attitudes, as a form of meritocratic discourse, impact on these students and on how they perceive their stereotyped position within the Reform Era educational system. The findings reveal that these students have internalised the ideology of meritocracy, coming to see themselves as inferior and inadequate compared to their academic counterparts. Turning ‘the gaze’ upon themselves, they examine whether they ‘add up’ and assume responsibility for their own ‘failures’. VET students are trained to be the new kind of youthful subject required to sustain the Reform Era China’s engagement with neoliberal governance.