With the rapid development of vocational education and the economy, higher vocational colleges have elevated their talent cultivation objectives to new heights and standards, placing increasing emphasis on the development of students’ comprehensive vocational competencies and professional ethics. This paper explores the role of literature course development in higher vocational colleges in enhancing students’ comprehensive professional competencies and occupational ethics. Through literature review, the study provides a solid theoretical foundation and empirical basis. Questionnaires targeting students’ comprehensive professional competencies and occupational ethics levels were developed and administered. The study used 80 students from the 2024 cohort at A Higher Vocational College in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, China, as the experimental sample. Action research and comparative experimental methods were employed to establish experimental and control groups, with teaching experiments conducted accordingly. Using the independent samples t-test to analyze the experimental results, the experimental class students who took the literature course achieved an average comprehensive vocational competence score of 80.67, which was 21.44 points higher than the control class, showing a significant difference (P=0.02<0.05). The average professional ethics evaluation score was 8.94 points higher than the control class, indicating a notable improvement in students' professional ethics.
