RETRACTED: From Outcomes to Capabilities: Reconceptualising the Assessment of Career Transition Quality among Vocational College Students in China

Abstract

This article has been retracted. See Retraction Notice: https://doi.org/10.64376/qsxfz214

The assessment of career transitions among vocational college students in China has long relied upon episodic outcome indicators such as employment status, salary, and study–job match. For a population whose outcomes are substantially conditioned by credential-based labour market discrimination and whose post-graduation destinations are highly heterogeneous, such an evaluative approach conflates educational quality with structural constraint and fails to capture the quality of the transition itself. This conceptual study, situated within the context of Chinese higher vocational education, develops an assessment framework that is both theoretically grounded and oriented towards evaluative practice. Drawing on the capability approach, it reconceptualises the object of assessment by proposing career transition capability—understood as students’ substantive freedom to pursue career paths they have reason to value—as the criterion of transition quality. Following Hart, this capability comprises the capability to aspire and the capability to realise aspirations, observed respectively through career aspiration, and through career engagement together with career decision-making difficulty. The framework positions career adaptability as a personal conversion factor, family, school, and labour market conditions as social conversion factors, and regional economic and industrial development as environmental conversion factors; the three types operate in parallel to jointly shape the two capabilities. Three assessment propositions and three design principles are derived, and an agenda for empirical validation is outlined. The framework is advanced as a developmental and equity-oriented complement to outcome indicators, rather than as a clinical or accountability instrument.