A Study On The Appropriate Scale Of Vocational Education

In 1991, a policy which supports the development of vocational education and the subsequent development of a series of laws and regulations truly created a new situation of vocational education. Subsequently, in 2002,2004 and 2005, three national conferences on vocational education introduced policies to support vocational education, and increased capital investment. All of the initiatives had promoted the development of vocational education. In 1996, China's higher vocational education gross enrollment rate was only 6%, by 2005 had risen to 21%, average 1.5 percentage points a year. Besides, in 2005, the number of students in higher vocational school was 7.13 million, accounting for 45.7%of the total number, compared to 1998 increased 11.3 percentage points. Now secondary vocational education and higher vocational education are nearly half of the total scale of high school education and higher education.At present, the state and government regarded vocational education as a focus of work. China has gone through rapid economic development, but the problems have also arisen. Demands for skilled workers and senior technicians, especially young high-level skilled workers are increasing. Vocational education is the cradle of technical talent. So in a few short years, China's vocational education has tripled the size of the turn.Referring to the studies home and abroad on the economic contribution of vocational education and general education, scholars have not been able to form a consensus. Whether the expansion of vocational education can play much to economic development has not yet to be confirmed. Then from the perspective of promoting economic development, how vocational education's future should be? What's the appropriate size of vocational education and general education? This is the research topics of this article. The innovation of this article is the establishment of economic growth model, which made after being inspired by a number of literatures home and abroad. This model does not take into account of the capital stock and changes in population, only technological progress and types of educational background are control factors in the model. Through the optimal actions of individuals, businesses and government, we obtain the optimal economic growth rates and the optimal ratio of the two types of education on balanced growth path. On balanced growth path; economic growth rate and exam pass rates are the inverted U type relationship. This conclusion coincides with the conclusions of some studies abroad. Some scholars studied the Prussian and other European countries, as well as the country's economic and educational development process, and then they found the same inverted U type conclusions. The only difference is that the conclusions in this article are more specific. I conclude that in China the vocational education should be more than general education three to four times.The conclusion of the model confirms the attention and support for vocational education of the Government. From the current situation of the development of vocational education, both secondary vocational education and higher vocational education have experienced rapid development in recent years, reflecting in enrollment, the number of students in school, student budget funding etc. Particularly in higher vocational education enrollment and the number of students achieved an average growth rate of over 20%, while the number of higher vocational education schools also achieved double-digit growth rates.According to the conclusions of this model and the current situation of the vocational education, we can see some of the problems. In this article I give some practical recommendations with a view to be useful to the development of vocational education.In addition, the other innovation of this article is that little literatures have discussed vocational education and general education from the economic interview, so this paper has a certain innovation value.