Volume 2,Issue 3
Policy Support for Building “Gold-standard” Health and Elderly Care Programs through Government–Industry–College Collaboration: Evidence from Jingzhou, China
China’s growing elderly population has increased the demand for qualified health and elderly care professionals and placed new demands on vocational education. Yet in practice, care institutions often participate less actively than colleges, and cooperation is still largely organized around internships or individual projects. Taking Jingzhou, Hubei Province, as a case, this paper examines the institutional factors that affect government–industry–college cooperation in developing high-quality health and elderly care programs. The analysis finds that the main difficulties lie in three areas: responsibilities among relevant actors are not sufficiently coordinated, the costs and benefits of participation are unevenly distributed, and educational resources and standards remain fragmented. The paper therefore focuses on four practical areas—workforce-demand research, professional standards, resource sharing, and quality evaluation—and discusses corresponding local policy measures. The development of the Health and Elderly Care Services program at Hubei College of Chinese Medicine is used to illustrate how these arrangements can be incorporated into program design and training. The Jingzhou case suggests that the depth and continuity of cooperation depend less on the number of agreements than on whether responsibilities are clear, training costs are reasonably shared, and information and resources can move between colleges and industry.
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