The Employment Dilemma and Pathways for Vocational College Graduates in the AI Era 

Yu Siyuan

Wenzhou University，Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province，325000；

Abstract:We analyze the employment issues that vocational college students face under the wave of artificial intelligence (AI). In March–April 2025, we carried out semi-structured interviews with eight vocational teachers of Xinjiang, Henan and Wenzhou by convenience sampling. What we have learned is contrary to our initial expectations; it is a matrix of complicated factors from politics, economy, society and technology: there are information information gaps in policy making so students do not know what it supports them; large scale changes in the economy appear visibly decreasing large-scale industry jobs, specially from manufacturing lines of majors such as accounting and software; employers begin to seek no only the domain specific knowledge but also the AI common knowledge that graduates can hardly master; institutions themselves lack high quality teachers, equipment and good AI teaching contents. From this we suggested five suggestions: instating AI common knowledge in colleges' teaching contents, adopting the way of project teaching, inspur college in-depth collaborative working with industries to deepen the traditions, dividing grades and majors for career pre-advisory works, conducting AI innovation competition. However, these successful implementation need policies and resources, without that all individual college or college teachers' works alone can hardly work

Keywords:AI;Vocational Colleges Graduates; Employment issues

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