BECE. Newsletter 

Vol.14, No.1, 2023 1768 

 

 

 

 

The Index of High-Quality Development of Chinese 

Vocational Education and the Measurement of 

Development Levels 

By Zhu, D. Q. & Peng, H. L. 
Correspondence to: Dequan Zhu, Southwest University, China. E-mail: editori-

al-office@bonoi.org  

LONGSIDE its rapid economic growth, China has built its vocational 

education that is of the largest scale in the world. Vocational education 

in China is undergoing a transition from scale-oriented growth to quality-

emphasized development. What is the current development level of Chinese 

vocational education? Has it accomplished high-quality development? What 

shortcomings does it have? To answer questions like these, it is necessary to 

formulate an index for high-quality development of Chinese vocational edu-

cation to measure its development levels. 

The design of the index is grounded on new development concepts. It 

includes five dimensions: innovative development, coordinated development, 

green development, open development, and shared development, and 11 sec-

ondary indicators, which together generate 42 parameters. Statistical data 

were sourced from the China Statistical Yearbook 2021, China Education 

Statistical Yearbook 2020, and China Educational Finance Statistical Year-

book 2021, as well as websites of local statistical bureaus and provincial and 

municipal education departments and third-party platforms such as Shanghai 

Academy of Educational Sciences, MyCOS Institute, and the Think Tank on 

China Higher Vocational Education Development. 

The entropy weight TOPSIS method was adopted to measure the in-

dex and sub-indexes of high-quality development of Chinese vocational edu-

cation to discover that: (1) among the 30 provincial administrative regions 

investigated, only one province takes the lead in the high-quality develop-

ment of vocational education, a number of them have an index value above 

the national average level, and the majority of them have a below-average 

index value; (2) there are significant regional differences in the high-quality 

development of vocational education, with eastern China having the highest 

quality of vocational education, followed by the central region, and with 

western China lagging behind in vocational education; (3) Chinese vocation-

al education is characterized by insufficient innovative development, a mod-

erate level of coordinated development, weak green development, impeded 

open development, and a lack of shared development. 

A 

mailto:editorial-office@bonoi.org
mailto:editorial-office@bonoi.org


 

Vol.14, No.1, 2023 1769 

 

 

Source: Journal of Southwest University, 2023; 49(1):138-152.