Background:
The technological and vocational higher education system in Taiwan is offering an undergraduate degree for design-based vocational high school students and general high school students whose qualitative and quantitative abilities are evaluated through a student selection examination.

Material and methods:
This study focused on the conceptual understandings of 64 freshmen with different backgrounds in design who have taken a full 18-week basic design course. Through this curriculum arrangement, the research team aimed to understand the distinctive learning achievements and basic design capacity of people in those two diverse background groups.

Results:
The results revealed that general high school students received higher evaluations on overall performance capabilities than vocational high school students did in the experiment, contradicting the common notion that students who graduate from vocational school have stronger design skills than students of other backgrounds do.

Conclusions:
We conclude that the technical and vocational education system might not effectively execute the design practical training curriculum. Another reason may be the credentialism present in Taiwanese society.