At the recently concluded 42nd WorldSkills Competition, China's construction industry sent two competitors to participate in the tile laying and bricklaying events. Facing strong skilled talent from abroad, China's construction industry competitors only won an excellence award in the tile laying event.

While feeling happy for the award-winning competitors, people are also reflecting: although last year China's construction assets ranked second on the global construction asset wealth list, the construction industry is growing, and construction workers are receiving increasingly higher wages, the team of construction skilled workers is continuously aging or even shrinking.
Problems in the cultivation soil

Although compared with the older generation of skilled workers, the new generation of young skilled workers who can both type on a keyboard and hold a trowel have more advantages and may promote the construction industry towards modernization. But in fact, due to factors such as tough working conditions, high risk, poor pay, and unclear career prospects, the construction industry has become an industry that most young people avoid.

According to Xing Zuoguo, secretary-general of the Construction Enterprise Operation and Labor Management Branch of the China Construction Industry Association, when the association initially selected candidates for the competition, it did not see the expected fierce competition. According to regulations, most events in the WorldSkills Competition require competitors to be under 22 years old. However, during the preliminary selection, the association found that there were few young competitors born after 1990, and most of them were students from vocational schools with almost no practical experience.

The final competitor selected was Gao Yantao, a student from Yantai Urban and Rural Construction School. Yu Jianyou, president of the Yu Jianyou National-level Master Skilled Worker Studio of Yantai Construction Group, which is the training base for the tile laying event of the 42nd WorldSkills Competition, told reporters that from confirmation of participation to the official competition, the training time was less than 8 months, and before that, Gao Yantao had never been exposed to tile laying. Although Gao Yantao majored in industrial and civil construction and had studied at school for three years, he had always studied theoretical knowledge.

“Vocational schools started late, have a low starting point, and receive little investment. The ‘follow-the-trend’ phenomenon in specialty setup results in few specialties for the types of work required by production positions. In Gao Yantao's five-year program, he studied theoretical knowledge for four years, while a real operator only needs one year to study theoretical knowledge and spends the rest of the time entirely on practice. Therefore, most graduates of vocational schools enter management.” Yu Jianyou said.

Xing Zuoguo said: “Vocational schools in France have a dedicated tile laying specialty with a three-year program and very detailed settings, such as heating specialty and roof protection specialty. Compared with Gao Yantao's 8-month crash training, the effect can be imagined.”

Gradually disappearing technical schools

Although the 2010 Opinions on Vigorously Promoting the Reform and Development of Technical Colleges issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security required vigorous promotion of the reform and development of technical colleges and acceleration of skilled talent training, the current situation is that technical school facilities are extremely outdated and cannot meet market demand.

Today, when the skilled worker market is booming and skilled workers are in short supply, many technical schools are deserted and even forced to close. Yu Jianyou told reporters that in the 1980s, enterprises set up technical schools in large numbers, but due to insufficient government attention and inadequate financial allocations, technical schools could only survive and had no time to solve problems such as outdated facilities and obsolete textbooks, let alone train blue-collar workers who meet market demand. As a result, in recent years, technical schools have closed one after another.

Technical schools not only lack teachers seriously, but also suffer serious loss of students. “The students of technical schools are mainly junior high school graduates from rural areas. In the life experience of generations facing the loess with their backs to the sky, adults always long for their children to leave the countryside, pass the college entrance examination, and find a ‘formal’ job in the future. Therefore, junior high school graduates with good grades all go to county towns to attend regular high schools. Some graduates who fail to enter high school choose to work elsewhere, resulting in even fewer students who can attend technical schools.” Yu Jianyou said.

However, even students who graduate from technical schools are not always willing to remain blue-collar workers. Sun Zhen, 24, after graduating from a technical school, works as a civil engineering technician in a construction team and earns about 3,000 yuan a month. When the reporter asked why he did not develop towards becoming a skilled worker, he shook his head repeatedly: “Although senior construction skilled workers can earn more than 6,000 yuan a month, I can't do it. It requires a lot of effort and has low social status. It is better to gradually move towards technical management.”

Rebuilding technical schools should transform towards school-enterprise cooperation

In contrast, in countries with developed manufacturing industries, the historical accumulation of “heavy industry” is exceptionally deep, and the income level and social status of technical blue-collar workers are only higher, not lower, than those of white-collar workers. However, China's talent concept holds that only going to university and becoming a white-collar worker counts as success, while attending technical schools and becoming workers are always inferior choices for students who do not do well academically. Under the premise that many earlier links are missing or have hidden dangers, at the final link, when enterprise production needs senior skilled workers, no one can be found, and even high salaries cannot attract them.

At present, enterprises' demand for low-skilled talent is becoming saturated. However, with the promotion and application of high-tech equipment, new processes, and new technologies, enterprises have increasingly higher requirements for workers' skills and knowledge, and a single operating skill can no longer meet production needs.

However, enterprises are also gradually recognizing this problem. Under the existing system, some vocational colleges have begun to transform towards marketization, and the school-enterprise cooperation model has become a new direction for vocational education. These schools sign training agreements with enterprises and rely on the market for survival.

As the president of the only national-level master skilled worker studio in the national construction industry, Yu Jianyou told reporters that the studio aims to cultivate high-level technical talent for society, directly connect with enterprises, train senior skilled workers into technicians, and supply talent for the construction industry.

“Because it is school-enterprise cooperation, in terms of talent training models, we will redevelop and set up courses according to the requirements of industries, enterprises, and professional positions for talent, integrate teaching content, and enhance the adaptability and pertinence of talent training.” Yu Jianyou said.

“The growth rate of first-class skilled workers cannot keep up with the speed of equipment and industrial upgrading. This has become a weakness of Chinese enterprises and a bottleneck for China's ‘overtaking on the curve’ from a major construction country to a strong construction country. And this hurdle must be passed sooner or later, and it must be passed.” Xing Zuoguo said.