Constrained capacity to aspire: how Chinese higher vocational education students navigate their futures in post-COVID-19

This paper examines how Chinese higher vocational education and training (HVET) students negotiated their ‘capacity to aspire’ amid the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Grounded in Appadurai’s concept of aspiration, we draw on a 15-month longitudinal study using semi-structured interviews with 26 graduates from five vocational institutions, conducted at students’ pre-graduation, immediately post-graduation, and several months after graduation. We identify three interlocking processes shaping students’ futures. First, pervasive credentialism intensifies the drive for academic upgrading. Second, macroeconomic contractions, credential inflation, shrinking vacancies, and the rise of precarious work trigger an ‘aspirational contraction’, compelling many graduates to lower their aspirations. Third, the pandemic-forced shift to online instruction and the cancellation of practical placements exposed institutional voids, exacerbating skill deficits and eroding students’ imagined futures. We introduce the concept of ‘constrained capacity to aspire’ to capture how vocational youth exercise agency through pragmatic goal adjustments while remaining confined by structural barriers. This highlights the need to broaden students’ aspiration windows and build more credible pathways towards secure and recognised futures.