2025 Forum on the Future of Vocational Education & 17th CNKI National Conference of Vocational College Presidents concludes in Shenzhen
SHENZHEN, October 14, 2025—The 2025 Forum on the Future of Vocational Education and the 17th CNKI National Conference of Vocational College Presidents concluded in Shenzhen. Guided by the Vocational and Technical Education Branch of the China Association of Higher Education and hosted by Shenzhen Polytechnic University, the event was co-organized by the China Institute for Technical and Vocational Education in the New Era and the international journal Vocation, Technology & Education, with Tongfang CNKI serving as the executive organizer. Centered on the theme "Vocational Undergraduate Education as a Catalyst: Accelerating the Development of a Modern Vocational Education System", the forum gathered nearly 240 college presidents, scholars, and industry representatives from 110 vocational institutions across China to jointly explore new pathways toward high-quality development.
In-depth discussions highlighted a shared view that vocational undergraduate education is entering a historic phase of opportunity marked by steady enrollment growth. Speakers stressed the importance of preserving its distinctly vocational identity while integrating theoretical rigor and forward-looking development. With industry–education integration as the cornerstone, they called for restructuring professional clusters, optimizing curricula, and enhancing faculty capacity to achieve systemic upgrading.
President Xu Jianling of Shenzhen Polytechnic University presented the university's practical advances in deepening industry–education integration. These included spearheading city-level industry–education consortia and co-establishing specialized industrial colleges and R & D centers with leading enterprises and thereby driving the deep alignment of education and talent pipelines with industrial and innovation chains. He urged vocational institutions to embrace their role as distinctive "type-based" higher education providers and to collaboratively forge a China-specific model of vocational education, contributing robustly to the national goal of building a strong education system.
