Fiscal Policy Research For The Development Of Vocational Higher Education

Chinese higher education has made great strides after implementing the policy of reform and opening-up, and it also has offered substantial intellectual resources to the economic society as a support. However, the emphasis of training talented people is required to shift from quantity to quality by the change of mode of economic development, which is to say that a rational organization of talents holds more significance than an increase in the amount of talents. During the past thirty years in China, talents employed for all needs, without exception, came from academic higher education, while a small part of vocational talents struggled for a crack of hope for development. Nowadays, we need more vocational talents to meet the demands which keep changing with each passing day. As is pointed by Marx in Das Kapital, "need grows together with the means that would fulfill it and on the very means lies the growth of need."Against such a background, the paper is expected to attain the following goals:firstly, to advocate a sustainable development of vocational higher education by the means of distinguishing vocational education in a traditional sense and vocational higher education, of which the result is to convert the traditional concept in society; secondly, to propose an establishment of a binary system, where equal importance is attached to both academic higher education and vocational higher education, thus they can produce mutual promotion and have common development; thirdly, to certify the necessity and probability of the development of vocational higher education through displaying relevant theories, actual states and foreign facts; fourthly, in discussing instrumental financial policy, to stimulate a change in the mode of nation's economic development, which as an ultimate end, is closely related to the exertion of financial capital's draw water capacity and better use of educational resources.Developing vocational higher education is of significance theoretically and practically. Firstly, developing vocational higher education has applied and enriched the Theory of Production and Consumption by Marx—production is consumption in itself and vice versa. Production creates and produces consumption. Specifically, the production of vocational higher education defines and characterizes its consumption, helps to finish consumption process and further creates its consumers. Secondly, developing vocational higher education is quite a demonstration of the Theory of Human Capital:since human capital is the most important kind of resources and human's cognitive ability can be improved by education, education may raise productivity; investment in human resources will bring utmost profits; population quality weighs more than the quantity, thus human resources highly qualified with technological knowledge produce more output in a remarkable way than lowly qualified human resources; investment of human capital plays a major role in comparison with that of material capital. Thirdly, developing vocational higher education presents a unity of law of education and economy. Both natural and social science are showing a tendency to transit from abstract academic knowledge to general practical knowledge. Science is fundamental to solving basic problems. Technology contains scientific components and emphasizes the applicability. Science means potential social productivity and technology direct social productivity, so it's rather important to develop vocational higher education with great efforts, to train batches of talents qualified with sophisticated technology and to finish the transformation of scientific and technological achievements into practical productive forces.Viewed from the perspective of practical significance, developing vocational higher education can promote the transformation of economic society. As a regulation being conducted in the economic course of turning planned system into market mechanism, developing vocational higher education has given impetus on a change from extensive to intensive management of economy, as well as a change from labor-intensive to capital-intensive finally to knowledge-intensive industry. What's more, developing vocational higher education plays an indispensable role in solving problems, such as the splitting-up of social classes, wide gap between the rich and the poor and unfair income distribution. Secondly, developing vocational higher education can ease up the conflict between binary economic society and integrated higher education. Thirdly, developing vocational higher education is the prerequisite of renewing society's idea, especially for the conventional employment principles, such as certificate-ism (to value applicants'education credentials to an unreasonable extent) and payment-ism (to believe that only one offers high payment can he employ qualified people).The paper will elaborate three innovative ideas. Firstly, the paper offers a conception of vocational higher education, constructs a system of vocational higher education which is coordinate with academic higher education, explains inherent connections between them and gives a series of intension definitions, like academic degree system of vocational higher education, system for training talented people, specialty setup, curriculum design, examination and enrollment system, reformation of running-school system, reformation of regulation system and so on. Secondly, the paper stresses the conception of talented people cultivated by vocational higher education. To put it further, the principles obeyed in cultivation of qualified vocational talents should be laying solid knowledge foundation and unifying theory and practice. Thirdly, the paper has put forward two ways of developing vocational higher education. One way is to separate vocational education institutes from the extension of academic colleges and the other way is to found independent vocational colleges. Different ways of developing vocational higher education have decided correspondingly different financial policies to conduct. The dominance of fiscal policy is to be highlighted. Financial allocation should not be the only answer when exploring how to develop vocational higher education. Welcome should be given to new ideas about reformation of financial system, income from donations, integration of Enterprises, Campuses and Research Institutes, mobilization of nongovernmental capital, establishment of a board of trustees in college or so.As a result of careful analysis, it's known that vocational higher education and academic higher education are discrete education systems in nature, but are closely connected in their development. Academic colleges will contribute to enhance the level of higher education while vocational colleges will help to popularize higher education. Without academic colleges, it would hamper theoretical knowledge being applied to aspects of social life. In a word, academic education serves as the source (origin) and vocational the course (development), if compared with a river. Academic education provides with conditions where vocational education can survive and develop. Similarly, vocational education works as a vital channel for realizing academic education's contribution to social production. Obviously, the dialectical relationship of vocational and academic education makes their conversion and interaction possible. Yet there is one point worth noticing. Admissible vocational degrees can change nowadays academic-degree-oriented state.Vocational education is semi-public goods with positive externality that is profitable for both education-receivers and society, so it's up to the government, market, business and individuals to assume educational costs in a joint effort. Vocational education can not only sharpen China's international soft competitive edge, but also pose mutual stimulus between industrialization and informationization. Relying on vocational education, China is walking on a path towards a newly-industrialized system of high scientific technology, favorable profits, low resource consumption, little environmental pollutions and fully-exploited human resources. Besides, vocational education can optimize the allocation of resources, adjust industrial structure, coordinate regional economic development and finally solve the problem of unfair income distribution. The advantages mentioned above of developing vocational education will only be realized under the support and regulation of law.As for the practice of fiscal policy, all resolutions'foothold, fiscal policies for the development of vocational higher education should specify due duty of finance, as well as guarantee vocational higher education necessary recognition and legal status. Which fiscal policy to choose is decided by the way vocational higher education develops.With the dominant position of fiscal policy being unchanged, some fiscal policies are universe while some for specific purpose. Therefore, to support vocational higher education, fiscal policies should be adjusted on the basis of existing higher education fiscal policies, rather than contrived from the scratch. The government, business and individuals need to shoulder education costs in proportion to respective profits received instead of counting on government's finance alone whose leverage is to stress the dominant status of business capital and to arouse the enthusiasm of individual investigation.