Situationer from News Center (Text by Shi Yudan from Publicity Department of Party Committee, Photos by Zhu Jingmin from Publicity Department of Party Committee and Tang Yi from School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering) Before the approaching of the tide of “high-quality development”, Liuzhou Vocational & Technical College (hereinafter referred to as “LVTC” or “the College”), one of the only two national demonstration higher vocational colleges in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, has gone with the tide and therefore scooped a new round of development opportunities.

In the new period of high-quality development focused on by the central government, the autonomous region and Liuzhou city, how does LVTC, a national demonstration higher vocational college, improve and guarantee the quality in its talent cultivation to support, serve or give an impetus to the high-quality development of Liuzhou’s industry? Over the past more than two decades of higher vocational education development, LVTC has shifted from the rapid and quantitative development to the high-quality development that focuses on connotation construction. Among the more than 300 vocational colleges throughout Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, LVTC is the first to introduce the performance excellence model from the United States and apply the Criteria for Performance Excellence which is widely applied to the review of quality awards at all levels in China to different fields of the College to vigorously improve its capability to serve the high-quality development of Liuzhou’s industry. So far, LVTC has achieved remarkable outcomes in serving Liuzhou’s industry and unleashing its talent supply capability.

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The Quality Assurance System Guarantees the Realization of the College’s Strategic Objectives

From the single teaching supervision mechanism in the very beginning to the current well-established internal quality assurance system, the College has realized a leapfrog development of its quality system based on top-level design from 1.0 to 4.0.

The College has formulated its plan for development during the “13^th Five-Year Plan” period and its development strategy that states “taking the lead in the world, upgrading the connotation and simultaneously promoting six practices to build a well-known higher vocational college with distinctive characteristics”, first introduced from the United States the performance excellence model and the Criteria for Performance Excellence, innovatively established a performance excellence quality evaluation standard system for vocational education, and continuously improved its integrated internal quality assurance system for education and teaching. The management standards are more systematic and comprehensive, and cover the content to construct the internal quality assurance system through decision-making and command system, quality generation system, resource construction system, support service system and supervisory control system from the perspectives of schools, majors, courses, teachers and students based on school-based data platform and to construct high-level college and high-level majors as required by the autonomous region for the diagnosis and improvement of the internal quality assurance system of higher vocational colleges, giving an endogenetic impetus to the continuous improvement of the College in a more overall and systematic manner.

Cultivation of Quality Culture with Total Involvement. With the goal of customer satisfaction, a thorough survey is conducted on the quality assurance of education and teaching, focusing on the College’s education and teaching quality strategy, quality standard formulation, responsibility sorting, process document preparation, management maturity assessment, etc. More than 250 training sessions have been systematically conducted for all faculty and staff, involving 21,658 participants and forming a quality culture of "no defect produced, accepted or passed on".

Mechanism Establishment for Concerted Effort: With the aid of performance excellence quality management tool, the College has restructured its organization and established a clear quality work mechanism that involves the College, schools and majors and mobilizes the participation of employers, students, parents and other quality stakeholders, breaking the past practice that took only the teaching department as the main body of quality assurance. Through the systems of standards, service support and process management as well as evaluation and improvement, the non-teaching departments such as Human Resources Department, Logistics Service Department and Student Affairs Department have been integrated into the category of "Big Quality" to achieve the education through teaching, service, management, environment and culture, thus forming a concerted effort in quality assurance and realizing the "all involvement, whole-process coverage and all-round guarantee".

Quantitative Standards and Measurable Assessments: Various quality standards are formulated. The College has formulated the students’ occupational competence standard and the education and teaching service standards (such as the student service standard and accommodation management and service standard), and innovated the standard for evaluation of management maturity of vocational colleges. Besides, the College has also created a clear chain of targets that involves the College, departments and individuals and a key performance indicator library, and applied to all departments, faculty and staff the performance evaluation and diversified assessments, including daily assessment + maturity assessment + performance assessment + third-party assessment that are all measurable.

Platform Establishment for Normalized Monitoring: The College has comprehensively optimized and improved its responsibilities and duties as well as talent cultivation procedures, independently developed 25 shared and integrated education and teaching service information systems, established 64 online approval processes and built the task tracking and evaluation system to strengthen the data collection, analysis and application, realize the whole-process informatization and carry out the normalized monitoring and early warning based on the intelligent quality assurance information platform (the smart campus construction project). Multiple practices have been applied simultaneously to promote the optimization and improvement of quality management and normalize the continuous improvement thereof.

The Capability in Supplying Quality Talents to Serve Liuzhou’s Economic Development Enhances Year by Year

In recent years, LVTC has been committed to the strength enhancement through quality improvement and quality system based on top-level design on the basis of vigorously strengthening the post-demonstration construction. In the process of implementing quality management and promoting diagnosis and improvement, LVTC has always focused on the key and difficult points, identified the breakthrough points, seized the high ground, made enormous efforts in serving as a demonstration of management, reform and development, actively introduced the internationally-leading vocational education standards, enterprise standards and industrial standards, and continuously enhanced the operation and quality, providing referable paradigm and serving as an important demonstration and guide for vocational colleges’ introduction of advanced quality management mode and enhancement of education and teaching quality.

The customer satisfaction in terms of education and teaching service has increased on an annual basis, with obvious increase in the satisfaction in teaching and that from students, parents and employers. LVTC has established a long-term self-evaluation mechanism, normalized the continuous improvement, and transited from externally-driven to internally-driven quality diagnosis and improvement, achieving a virtuous cycle of quality diagnosis and improvement. The students from “LiuGong Class” are active in different parts of the world, and more than half of LVTC’s graduates stay in Liuzhou, contributing their share to the development of Liuzhou. An HR Supervisor from an employer once said, “More than half of our section chiefs graduated from LVTC.” Among the 63.6% of graduates seeking career development in Guangxi in 2017, 39.2% stayed in Liuzhou. Professionals have provided a vigorous support to Liuzhou’s economic development, which reflects the value of the College’s existence that is to serve the society. The College’s support to the local economy has increased year by year, and its talent cultivation quality has been widely recognized and highly praised by employers.

As the education and teaching quality keeps improving, the College’s influence is also growing. It ranks 27th among the more than 1,300 higher vocational colleges in China in terms of competitiveness and 19th among the 100 demonstration higher vocational colleges in terms of influence. By 2017, it had been rated as an “Advanced Unit in Employment and Entrepreneurship in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region” for successive 17 years (the only one in Guangxi). In 2016, it was listed among the top 50 colleges and universities in China in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship.

In this context, the Internal Quality Assurance System Construction Onsite Promotion Meeting of Guangxi Vocational Colleges, aiming at “setting up high-level vocational colleges and providing vocational education to the public’s satisfaction”, was held at LVTC, which sufficed to show LVTC’s demonstration and guiding role. LVTC will make greater and newer achievements and accomplishments by accelerating the establishment of a modern vocational education quality management system adaptable to the high-quality development of Liuzhou’s industry and utilizing the performance excellence model to invigorate all actors in teaching activities and unleash its powerful capability in talent supply to the society, so that the talent cultivation quality can better match with and meet the requirements from the high-quality development of Liuzhou’s industry. (This article was published on Page 3 of Liuzhou Daily dated October 31, 2018)

The College creates a quality culture atmosphere of “no defect produced, accepted or passed on”

                                                    A teacher explains to the students the specifications of parts at a workshop in the factory in the College

The College’s ZF precision parts production line produces piston brackets, the core part of loaders manufactured by Liugong Group, which meet the requirements of Grade 6 in processing precision, with a total of 157 indicators meeting Germany’s quality inspection standards