On February 14-22, 2023, the 67th annual conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) was held in a combination of online and offline sessions. The theme was "Improving Education for a More Equitable World", and more than 3,600 scholars from around the world participated in the conference.

On February 14, the online conference was held at first. IICE Professor LIU Baocun was invited to attend the opening ceremony and delivered a speech. He pointed out that the world is now full of uncertainties. The economic downturn and the impact of the new epidemic have made the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 fade away, so comparative education scholars from all over the world should join hands to promote the development of education, promote educational equity and build a fairer world through educational equity.

In the next session, Professor LIU, together with Dr. ZHUANG Tengteng from the Institute of Higher Education of Beijing Normal University and IICE Professor TENG Jun, presented a speech entitled “Towards a Trinitarian Degree System of Academic Degree, Professional Degree and Vocational Degree”. Professor LIU pointed out that one of the major reasons for the lack of attractiveness of vocational education in China is that vocational education is a "dead end". For this reason, China should establish a trinitarian degree system of academic, professional and vocational education, breaking the barriers between different types of education to provide every student with the opportunity to receive higher level education.