Baorong Chen*, Qingdong Huang, Wei Wang
School of Electronics and Internet of Things, Chongqing Polytechnic University of Electronic Technology, Chongqing 401331, China.
*Corresponding author: Baorong Chen
Abstract
The Professional Education Teaching Standards revised in 2025 explicitly define the cultivation objective of vocational undergraduate education as “high-end skilled talents,” marking a significant positioning upgrade from the “highly skilled talents” cultivated by higher vocational (junior college) education. This paper elucidates the triple connotations of “high-end” from a theoretical perspective—namely, the high level of the industrial sector, the high level of competency, and the high level of knowledge structure—and analyzes the triple logics underlying this positioning upgrade: industrial upgrading, typological education, and talent cultivation. On this basis, it reveals the triple tensions that the transformation from policy texts to educational practice faces, i.e., the tensions between “upgrading” and “preserving the essence,” between “theory” and “practice,” and between “standardization” and “distinctiveness.” Furthermore, it explores the key pathways for implementing cultivation objectives from four dimensions: curriculum system reconstruction, practical teaching innovation, platform building for industry-education-science synergy, and assessment reform oriented toward “competence + innovation.” The study concludes that the key to the successful transformation of cultivation objectives in vocational undergraduate education lies in finding a dynamic balance between “academic height” and “vocational nature,” thereby forging a distinctive development path that differentiates it from both higher vocational junior colleges and application-oriented undergraduate institutions.
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How to cite this paper
From “Highly Skilled” to “High-End”: Positioning Upgrade and Practical Transformation of Cultivation Objectives in Vocational Undergraduate Education
How to cite this paper: Baorong Chen, Qingdong Huang, Wei Wang. (2026). From “Highly Skilled” to “High-End”: Positioning Upgrade and Practical Transformation of Cultivation Objectives in Vocational Undergraduate Education. The Educational Review, USA, 10(6), 341-345.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/er.2026.06.001