6.12 Agricultural tertiary education reform in China

Education institutions can also play a significant part in promoting collaboration across disciplines and between the public and private sectors.

Despite the differences in size and quality of tertiary and technical and vocational education and training (TTVET) institutions across developing East Asia (table F.1 in appendix F), they share a few common TTVET-specific challenges. The TTVET institutions suffer from an increasing brain drain of young and educated graduates (in agriculture along with other disciplines) and difficulties in attracting students and lecturers to the sector. The undervalued TTVET system is inadequate for meeting labor market demand (for example, for business, management, ICT, and cross-disciplinary skills). Both tertiary and vocational curricula are mostly supply-driven and outdated. In addition, cross-disciplinary collaboration and skills are limited, which constrains discovery of solutions to emerging cross-sectoral issues. The deficiencies in the training of workers by firms, especially among small and medium enterprises, limits knowledge upgrading and undermines progress toward higher value added and productivity. In a similar vein, aging (and sometimes absent) farmers with lower education and skills add to difficulties in improving the productivity and sustainability of farming. However, several reforms (for tertiary and vocational education and for farmer training) have been carried out to address the relevance and attractiveness of the agriculture sector as well as skills shortages and multidisciplinary collaboration, although mostly in the upper MICs and the region’s high-income countries. These reforms are discussed in this section. Table F.1 and appendix F provide additional details on selected approaches.

The quality, relevance, and efficiency of agricultural education constrain the development of human resources in most countries. Enrollment in agricultural programs is low or declining in some countries (Cruz et al. 2013; James, Gill, and Bates 2013; unCTAD 2018).23 Reasons for low enrollment include quality, relevance, and access to education as well as overall declining attractiveness of the agriculture sector. China’s experience in agricultural education reform at the tertiary level serves as a good example of a gradual process of change that aimed to improve the relevance and attractiveness of agricultural education (box 6.12).

Collaboration across institutions and disciplines offers opportunities to improve the relevance of education and graduates, and to improve joint problem

Agricultural tertiary education reform in China

Agricultural education reform at the tertiary level began in China in the 1980s. The objective was to better respond to the wider reforms in the agriculture sector and in the economy (toward a market orientation).

The changes that emerged from the gradual reform, which took more than a decade (including pilots and wide stakeholder consultation), include the following: decentralization of the administrative structure along with greater decision-making responsibility, changing curricula and pedagogical approaches, changing student enrollment, aligning employment patterns more closely with labor-market expectations, changing internal administrative structures for staff recruitment, and reforming logistical systems. Although several outcomes were positive, graduate employment did not improve because of greater competition for jobs.

Source: World Bank 2012.

solving and financing. Limited interaction and exchange of personnel between universities and industry have tended to exacerbate skilled labor supply shortages in the region. However, China, Malaysia, Thailand, and to some extent Indonesia have promoted university-industry collaboration. China and Indonesia have pursued such collaboration through PPPs and diverse innovation funds (see section titled “Building private sector capacity for market-based innovation is necessary for agri-food system transformation”). CoEs24 may also foster multidisciplinary R&D collaboration, which is often a precondition for identifying solutions to, for example, nutrition, zoonoses, food safety, and environmental challenges. For instance, in the netherlands, the functions of agricultural R&D and that of Wageningen university were combined in 1997, resulting in the establishment of the Wageningen university and Research Center. The trigger for the merger came from the Ministry of Agriculture’s desire to improve the image of agriculture (among potential students as well as others) and to develop a content-inspired international learning environment with greater attention to competencies, professional and academic education, and diverse and dynamic learning tracks (World Bank 2012). A prominent regional example of university-industry links and a CoE comes from the Thai shrimp industry (box F.8 in appendix F).25 Additional support, such as facilitation, contracting, and IPR, is often needed to accelerate innovation (see section titled “Building private sector capacity for market-based innovation is necessary for agri-food system transformation”).

Most countries in the region have paid limited attention to improving the availability of, access to, and quality of the technical track. Vocational training can play a significant role in improving the skills of extension agents, business employees, and farmers. However, based on the literature review, vocational agricultural training is either limited in scope or receives scant attention. For instance, in Cambodia and Vietnam, significant deficits of skilled technicians and workers with vocational qualifications remain, despite a desperate need for people with such skills in industry (OECD 2017b). A major issue is the perceived inferior status of vocational training as compared with university qualifications. Malaysia has tried to tackle this problem by incorporating vocational training programs into tertiary education, for example, by setting up several new university colleges to revamp the science, technology, and engineering education system. A national dual training system has also been incorporated into existing vocational education to address technical labor shortages. In Thailand, a science-based technology school has been established to increase the number of qualified vocational students. Work-integrated learning is being expanded through the Practice Engineering School approach to meet industry demand for engineers. The program provides work and research experience at industrial sites to students who study for one year and work on industrial projects for the second year at the company (Intarakumnerd 2010 ). Business firms are also important creators of human capital for the innovation system and are not simply employers (OECD 2013; appendix F). A few recent approaches (box 6.13) illustrate that improvement of vocational training is possible.

Improved farmer capacity, along with other investments, is a precondition for long-term development of the agri-food system. The past several decades have seen significant advances in average schooling levels of the labor force across the developing world. However, average attainment levels and the quality of rural schooling trail that of urban areas (Barrow and Lee 2013). Although adult literacy rates are high in most East Asian countries, the differences