BEIJING - There were 1,341 vocational colleges for higher education in China in 2015, according to the Ministry of Education (MOE) Tuesday.

These colleges were attended by 10.48 million students in 2015, accounting for 41.2 percent of all college undergraduates.

These vocational institutes also provided on-the-job training to 20 million people in 2015.

Vocational colleges offer occupational courses, and are important to transforming higher education from an elite area to one for the masses, said Ge Daokai, director of the Department of Vocational and Adult Education with the MOE.

As of 2015, all the provincial regions in China had established financial support systems for vocational colleges. Annual financial subsidies on each student should be no less than 12,000 yuan (1,806 U.S. dollars) in 2017, according to the MOE.

A budget of 5 billion yuan from the government is also expected from 2016 to 2020, to promote the combination of production and study and build a modern vocational education system.