Enterprise partner selection for vocational education: analytical network process approach

Abstract

One of the major purposes of implementing vocational education is to offer trained manpower to enterprises that meet the immense challenges of the global economic competition and unprecedented technological changes. Selecting an adequate enterprise, from the school's viewpoint, is a critical factor for implementing the vocational education system. This paper suggests applying the ANP approach in order to deal with the interdependence among criteria of different layers of the analysis process to select the suitable partner enterprise where students can gain experience. The paper describes the cooperation patterns between schools and enterprises as well as the criteria which should be considered and the corresponding attributes used to evaluate the potential enterprises.