Journal of Higher Education Research

At the critical stage of the full implementation of the "15th Five-Year Plan", vocational education serves as the core link connecting the education chain, talent chain, industrial chain, and innovation chain. Its high-quality development is directly related to China's economic transformation and upgrading as well as the construction process of a strong human resource country. The vocational education thought founded by Mr. Huang Yanpei, with "socialization" as its core essence, contains profound wisdom of the synchronous development of vocational education and social progress. This paper systematically sorts out the historical evolution and core connotation of Huang Yanpei's vocational education thought, and deeply analyzes the development trends of vocational education in fields such as specialty construction, curriculum system, school-running model, and teaching scenarios, combined with the era background of China's industrial structure adjustment and accelerated technological transformation during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period. Through a comparative study of history and reality, this paper proposes a socialized development path based on Huang Yanpei's thought, including establishing a dynamic specialty adjustment mechanism, constructing a three-dimensional literacy cultivation system, innovating the government- enterprise-school collaborative organizational form, and building a virtual-real integrated teaching ecology. Corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are also put forward to address the challenges in implementation, providing theoretical reference and practical guidance for the high-quality development of vocational education during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period.