Higher Vocational Education Initiative Enrollment Motivation Research

The Outline of Chinas National Plan for Medium and Long-Term Education Reform and Development (2010—2020) proposed: "national prosperity is tied to education ... we need to vigorously develop vocational education and enhance its attractiveness". Under the new situation, the higher vocational education should make positive changes to adapt to the national development, as well as change the status of insufficient attractiveness, for attracting more students to enroll in the college actively. So, realizing the importance of transformation from "quantity" to "quality" has become the key to the sustainable and healthy development of Higher Vocational Education. This paper based on the student's active enrollment motivation in Higher Vocational Education. And through analyzing and sorting the data in student questionnaires from three higher vocational colleges, it could be concluded that the student's active enrollment motivation could be divided into four main categories, namely employment type, achievement type, practicality type and ideality type, which present three features: the purpose and the cause of the active enrollment become more reasonable and realistic; the active enrollment is dominated by the dominative motives with the continuous developments and changes; the intensity of active enrollment motivation and learning efficiency are not always in direct proportion. Through statistically analyzing the data in questionnaire, it could be found that the differences in colleges and majors in higher vocational education are the important factors affecting the active enrollment motivation, and distinctively leading to different influence to different types. Based on the data analysis, the paper mainly focused on 2 perspectives of hierarchy of needs and rational-choice theory, to analyze in-depth the factors influencing the active enrollment motivation, and put forward the specific measures for improving the attractiveness of higher vocational education mainly in three levels: national, social and school level, according to the data in the case study. And the measures in national level include that the steady increase of the attractiveness in higher vocational attraction is the fundamental premise to improve student's active enrollment motivation, the strong investment is the important guarantee to improve student's active enrollment motivation, the upgrade of the level of higher vocational education is the effective push power to improve the student's active enrollment motivation. In the social level, the measures include that to set up the correct values to build the good social atmosphere in which the labor work and vocational education are respected, to gradually improve the social status and salary level of high-skilled talents, to strengthen and modify the system of employment admittance to ensure the basic rights of people with skill certificates. In the school level, the measures include that to promote the major construction with the objective of service and the backing of the market, to form the group of "two-qualification" teachers with the steady theoretical basis and strong technologically practical ability, to build the pattern to coordinate the development of public and private colleges, to integrate the short-term earnings with career planning and finally meet the diverse needs of students.