Institutionalization: Outcomes and Challenges of the Apprenticeship Training Reforms

This chapter analyzes how the collaborative, targeted training practices—described in Chap. 3—were institutionalized into the national reform agenda of workforce upskilling under the “Made in China 2025” initiative. Guided by the three criteria established in Chap. 1’s theoretical framework—underinvestment in human capital, skills mismatch, and the imbalance between general and enterprise-specific skills—the chapter compares the parallel apprenticeship programs launched by the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS). The MOE’s approach, building on existing school–firm cooperation, effectively addressed the underinvestment issue and reduced skills mismatch through flexible, practice-oriented training. In contrast, the MOHRSS’s reliance on the National Vocational Qualification System struggled to attract firms’ participation, but remained disconnected from actual workplace demands. Yet both models failed to resolve the third issue: the MOHRSS overemphasized standardized, general skills, while the MOE schools’ partnerships with employers produced training that was too specific to individual firms’ immediate needs. This reveals a central challenge in China’s apprenticeship reforms: striking an effective balance between skills that meet a single, participant employer’s short-term needs and those that retain broader applicability in the labor market.