The Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition

Welcomes you to

Sponsored by

Exhibitors

Student Workers

An honest discussion of the current situation in China and neighboring countries. Presenting

tools and incentives designed to help companies better understand how student workers can play

a positive role in the electronics supply chain

EICC Asia Network

Student Workers Project with LESN and Nanjing UniversityCo-Leads:

Ernest Wong, HPCindy Feng, Dell

EICC Asia Network Charter

• Be the channel to collect voice from Asia to EICC

• Promote EICC and the code of conduct in Asia

• Address regional issues by leveraging the local

expertise

• Develop new Asia-based chapters and assist strategic

direction

• Share information and best practices in the region

Student Workers Project

• To promote responsible management of student workers in EICC supply chain through: – Enrich the audit tools

• Key questions to address managing student workers

– Provide tool kits • Help suppliers evaluate the risk level of vocational

schools

– Share the best practices

Deliverables

• Integrate HP Student Workers audit tool into EICC VAP audit protocol– Underway with VAP team

• Develop a toolkit for suppliers to – Assess risk level of vocational training schools– Guidelines for gap analysis about the practices of

student workers management– Case studies about best practices of factories and

school

ToolkitSchools Factory

Recruitment When and how to arrange student interns

How to avoid under-aged students;Other recruitment procedures including body-check

Pre-work training

Guidance training to students and teachers

Orientation to students and teachers

During work In-factory follow-up by teachers;How to resolve issues and disputesEducational opportunities

Work load and working hour arrangements;How to resolve issues and disputesEducational opportunitiesDormitory and living arrangement

After internship

Educational opportunities How to enhance positive collaboration with school

Others Educational capacity development Educational capacity development

Toolkit Implementation Phases• Phase 1: Policy and Guidelines Research and Review, Case Nomination (2.5

months)– Preparation and confirmation of project contracts and documents (complete) – Research Framework Design: EICC task group need to agree on the Framework, the scale

and nature of the legal and policy review (just as recommendations or as a basic guideline?) (complete)

– Issue finding survey, legal and policy Review: a short paper as result, will be used as introduction to the toolkit (complete)

– Meantime: nominating and confirming cases (complete)– Discussion and finalize the legal and policy review (complete)

• Phase 2: Case survey, interviews and research (3 months)– 2-3 days on site for each case. 1 day before and after for preparation and data logging,

case reports writing (in progress)– EICC task group review case reports: reports will be reviewed during this period not only at

the end. Should schedule a review meetings every 2 months (2 weeks)• Phase 3: Final Report (2 months)

– Report writing and review (4 weeks)

Toolkit Status• Survey Preliminary Information

– Generally expected responses– Some innovation at supplier sites– Different challenges and needs between brands and manufacturers or suppliers

• Desktop research – Over 60 laws related to student workers issue

• Local regulation contains clearer law• Raises questions about conflict of law where students travel from province to province or city

to city

• Cases Studies – 4 Brands have nominated suppliers

• Acer, Best Buy, Dell, HP

– 2 have confirmed dates• Integrate into the best practice tool kit

– Purpose is to identify successes– Provide resources for schools and factories over internship’s time-span

Thank you!

谢谢！

The Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition

Welcomes you to

Sponsored by

Exhibitors

China’s Human Capital Challenge and What Can Be Done About It

October 2, 2013Scott Rozelle, Prashant Loyalka,

James Chu

Today’s Talk

1. China’s human capital challenge2. What is REAP?3. Vocational high schools in China4. Tools to Improve: how the EICC can

participate in improving vocational high schools in China

13

China’s economy grew by more than20 times from 1978 to 2010

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators

19781981

19841987

19901993

19961999

20022005

20080

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

GDP (billions US$)GDP per capita (US$)

In 2000 US$

14

Growth was fueled by the movement of cheap, unskilled, rural labor into low-cost, labor-intensive industries

15

How Expensive are Chinese Workers?Manufacturing Wages 1994-2008 (USD/year)

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 20080

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

4500

2018 1638

2833

2849

2338

4231

433

1075

367

481 497

1180

3481

China India Indonesia Philippines Thailand

China

Thailand

Philippines

IndiaIndonesia

China

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Implications

• China continues to grow: RISING DEMAND

• Size of labor force falls: FALLING SUPPLY

Rising wages in the future

Changing industrial structure

By 2025 to 2030 $6 to $8 to $10/hour

1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 20080

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

4500

2018 1638

2833

2849

2338

4231

432.803910007456

1075.02577595949

367

481 497

1180

3481

China India Indonesia Philippines Thailand

Source: International Labor Organization LABORSTA Database

China

Thailand

Philippines

IndiaIndonesia

ChinaHow Expensive are Chinese Workers?Manufacturing Wages 1994-2008 (USD/year)

But, with higher wages, can China move itself up the productivity ladder?

“Textile worker” in high wage countries

“made to order” Gucci shoe factory

To do his job, he needs to be competent in math, language, English and computers …

Will these young women … who are working in China’s textile plants now … be able to do the job in a modern

high fashion textile plant?

Unfortunately, most barely know how to read and write …

This is an auto mechanic … in Palo Alto …

Question: “Will these boys be able to do the jobs that need to be done in the future economy?”

None of these students have ever touched a computer or surfed the web

The High School Gap

% of students that go to high school

Today

Millions of poor, rural kids not going on to high school!

26

Today’s Talk

1. China’s human capital challenge2. What is REAP?3. Vocational high schools in China4. Tools to Improve: how the EICC can

participate in improving vocational high schools in China

27

REAP seeks to address this human capital gap.

The Rural Education Action Program is a Research Organization/NGO/Government

Organization/Policy Action partnership

Collaborators in ChinaAt Stanford University

We are committed to finding solutions to the help bridge the gap … cost effective … scalable … efficient solutions … to help all

kids realize their educational dreams

Our Vision

Education/ health / nutrition

gaps

Help brian

To understand the barriers keeping the rural poor from closing the gap and learn what can be done

REAP works in two ways

1. REAP identifies problems in education, health and nutrition … and then designs and implements new program interventions and conducts the evaluations

2. REAP partners with NGOs, Foundations and government agencies who are trying to implement projects– REAP advises– They carry out – REAP evaluates

We call this “action research”

REAP partners

REAP partners

Academic organizations

Corporations (CSR groups)

Foundations

Competitive Grant-making Agencies

US, European and other foreign firms companies

REAP Experiments (Projects) in China’s Poor Rural Areas (and Migrant

Communities)

1

2

5

346

7

109

8 12

16

13

1514

1117

16

23

2

45

18

21

2019

22

26

2524

24

25

25

231515 16

25

15

>30

REAP’s Three “Action Platforms”

Keeping Kids in SchoolTechnology and Human Capital

Health, Nutrition and Education

So what is the key to “action research”?

Two things:

1. The rigorous / but simple way that we demonstrate IMPACT …

2. Our commitment to scaling up … through engagement in policy …

Find solutions by helping 100s and 1000s …

… and work with the government to help 1,000,000s …

Our ultimate goal:

REAP has touched the lives of millions of China's poorest and most needy children

From Results to Policy Action

Today’s Talk

1. China’s human capital challenge2. What is REAP?3. Vocational high schools in China4. Tools to Improve: how the EICC can

participate in improving vocational high schools in China

45

The High School Gap

% of students that go to high school

Today

Millions of poor, rural kids not going on to high school!

46

One reason students do not go on to high school is that they face a highly competitive education system

•China has limited spots & highly competitive entrance exams for both academic HS & college.•And poor, rural

students score lower on tests…

47

Vocational schools are an alternative, parallel track (versus academic high school) in China

48

Vocational high school (non competitive)

Academic high school (competitive)

Vocational schooling in a nutshell

• 3 years, full-time learning• Overseen by multiple ministries, mainly Ministry of

Education and Ministry of Human Resources– This is a problem… one that we will discuss later

• First two years of classroom learning, last year internships

• Purpose is to teach both basic and technical skills so student is ready for workforce

Policymakers are very interested in vocational schooling

• Their strong interest has resulted in – the expansion of

vocational high school enrollments from 11.7 million to 22.1 million in the last decade

50

Annual investments in vocational school of 140 billion yuan (22.6 billion dollars)

19961997

19981999

20002001

20022003

20042005

20062007

20082009

20100

20000000000

40000000000

60000000000

80000000000

100000000000

120000000000

140000000000

160000000000

51

PROBLEM

• In general, vocational schools aren’t teaching kids (and some are even hurting kids)

• This is bad for the kids….– They will not be ready for the future workplace

• Bad for China– Wasting money

• Bad for companies working in China– May hire student workers who do not meet compliance

standards (i.e. school does not take care of its students properly)

– Lower productivity from student workers– In the long term, lack of skilled laborers to hire

52

Our Study: We collected information on 10,071 academic and vocational high school students in one non-poor, eastern province (Zhejiang) and one poor, western province

(Shaanxi).

SHAANXI

ZHEJIANG

53

A baseline survey…

• We collected information from:• Students in computer

majors in vocational high schools (they take a lot of computer classes—this is their SPECIFIC skill)

• Regular students in non-elite, academic high schools (they take one computer class)

54

At the end of the year, we gave the “same” math (general skills) and computer (specific skills) exams

Start of the year End of the year

55

FINDING 1: Vocational students are losing in both specific and general skills

MATH COMPUTER

-0.35

-0.3

-0.25

-0.2

-0.15

-0.1

-0.05

0

-0.32

-0.16

Vocational High School

Academic High School

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Of course, this lack of learning may not be the fault of vocational schools

• Perhaps vocational school students are simply unprepared to learn well.

• We are not comparing “apples to apples” because kids who go to vocational school are different from kids who go to academic high school.

• But, it could also be that vocational schools are of very low quality.

• Which interpretation is right?

57

To answer this question, we matched vocational and academic high school students on many traits to create “twins”

Vocational high school student

Academic high school student

58

FINDING 2: For poor students especially… attending a vocational high school reduces general skills by 0.29 SD with no gains in

specific skills.

MATH COMPUTER DROPOUT

-0.35-0.3

-0.25-0.2

-0.15-0.1

-0.050

0.05

Chart Title

VET Academic High School

59

Here’s how teachers and principals explained the situation…

• “Do I like this school? I am planning to leave as soon as I can.”

• “I’ve been a principal for 30 years now so I don’t even care if I’m fired… I can tell you that of every dollar going to vocational high school, half of that lines somebody’s pockets.”

60

But nothing explained what was happening better than going to a school and seeing what kids were “learning”

61

Vocational high schools are not a viable alternative path (yet)

• Taken together, our findings indicate that vocational high school fails to build necessary general skills and does little to improve specific skills.

• Challenge: what can be done? Reporting on these results will lead to “war” … lots of entrenched interests … how do you make changes in dysfunctional institution?

62

Today’s Talk

1. China’s human capital challenge2. What is REAP?3. Vocational high schools in China4. Tools to Improve: how the EICC can

participate in improving vocational high schools in China

63

One way to improve vocational schooling is to differentiate between “good” and “bad” schools

– Evaluating schools is NOT an old idea– High schools

– number of students who go on to top-tier colleges and college entrance exams

– Junior high schools– number of students who go on to top-tier high schools and high

school entrance exams• But vocational high schools are not evaluated well

• Multiple ministries means multiple (non-standard) evaluation metrics

• Metrics primarily look at inputs—things that can be falsified and do not necessarily translate to outputs (student learning, quality work in factories like those for EICC members)

64

No standard evaluation = no quality control = low quality

• A student asked: “Professor, can you tell me which vocational high schools are good? I don’t know which one to attend.”

• Good schools (teach kids and provide high quality workers) do not receive additional encouragement

• Bad schools (do not teach kids and provide low quality workers) are not penalized.

65

Our objectives

• Evaluate vocational schools in Henan on a common standard– Find out which are good (are helping kids learn), which

are bad (are not)• Create a credentialing system: factories can

partner exclusively with good schools in the future– Win-win-win!

• Student gets better education• Government spends money more effectively• Factories hire better workers

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Also… policy impact!

What we plan to do…

• Evaluate 200+ vocational schools around Zhengzhou, Henan• Evaluate them on non-falsifiable outputs

– How much are kids learning?• Specific skills• Basic skills

– Dropout rates– Internship performance

• And a series of other inputs– Teacher quality, teaching practices, finances, facilities,

governance– Compliance standards (e.g. proper practices to care for students,

arrange internships)68

Cohort 1: first year students

1st year

• Classroom learning (both basic and technical skills)

2nd year

• Classroom learning (primarily technical skills)

3rd year

• Internship

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October 2013:Baseline

May 2014:Endline

Cohort 2: second year students

1st year

• Classroom learning (both basic and technical skills)

2nd year

• Classroom learning (primarily technical skills)

3rd year

• Internship

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October 2013:Baseline

May 2014:Endline

July 2014: Follow-up @ internship

In some schools, students will acquire knowledge and skills…

In other schools, students will not be learning much at all…

Ultimate goal: An “EICC Compliance Standard” for Vocational Schools

• The plan:– Once we identify the “good” versus “bad” schools, we

make the rankings available to EICC members. – We ask the government to jointly offer an “EICC

compliant” benchmark to the top 10% of schools– EICC members can choose to partner these EICC

compliant schools… schools that teach students AND meet compliance standards

– Finally, we allow schools to voluntarily apply for an evaluation to become EICC compliant

– This motivates lower-performing schools to “shape up”

Thank you!reap.stanford.edu

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The Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition

Welcomes you to

Sponsored by

Exhibitors