Constraints, mechanisms, and strategies for industry-education integration in vocational education: An empirical study

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0339158 December 18, 2025 16 / 18 instance, comparing Shenzhen with Guangzhou, or China with Germany’s dual-system, to test constraint mechanism generalizability; 2) conducting industry-specific studies, such as optimizing equipment-sharing policies for manufacturing, designing stable contracts for construction, and exploring skill mismatch in service sectors like healthcare; and 3) integrat- ing mixed methods, including quantitative surveys across sectors and qualitative longitudinal enterprise cases, to refine constraint pathways, thereby providing a more context-aware understanding of IEI development. Supporting information S1 Text. Score statistics of potential constraining factors. (DOCX) S2 Text. Demographic information of the interviewees. (DOCX) Author contributions Conceptualization: Bo Yu. Data curation: Chun Xu. Formal analysis: Siyuan Zhang, Peng Mao. Funding acquisition: Jing Shi. Investigation: Bo Yu, Siyuan Zhang, Jing Shi, Gang Wu. Methodology: Bo Yu. Project administration: Ruipu Li. Resources: Ruipu Li, Peng Mao, Chun Xu, Jing Shi, Gang Wu. Software: Siyuan Zhang. Validation: Peng Mao. Visualization: Chun Xu. Writing – original draft: Bo Yu. Writing – review & editing: Ruipu Li, Gang Wu. References 1. Lin H, Nie S, Wu P, Yuan M, Yu M, Tam V. Megaproject responsible innovation: Concept, framework, and governance. Front Eng Manag. 2025;12(3):653–68. 2. Yu C, Jin H. Labor agglomeration, industrial structure upgrading and low-carbon economic development. Financ Res Lett. 2025;74:106703.

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