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Who is to blame for the worst graduate job market in China’s history?

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In Brief

Approximately 6.99 million students will graduate this year from Chinese colleges and universities, a new all-time high. This reflects China’s attempt to upgrade its workforce by promoting higher education. But the labour market is sending some rather disappointing messages. Against the backdrop of the troubled world economy and faltering domestic demand, companies in China are increasingly losing their appetite for new hires.

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The Chinese media predicts that 2013 will be the most difficult job-hunting year in history for university graduates. So who is to blame for this? And what can be done to fix it?

The core of the job shortage is not so much about low-skilled persons seeking jobs but rather the difficulties faced by highly-educated persons in finding employment. Universities are a key supplier of human resources for the labour market, but their capacity to enhance the employability of graduates is constrained in at least three ways.

The first relates to the definition of the aims of higher education. In the wake of China’s opening-up, market-based values have gained momentum in all aspects of Chinese society. People have increasingly identified with previously unheard of concepts such as competition and profitability. Chinese companies have been constantly changing their requirements for competencies to survive and grow in the market. Within this context, there is an obvious gap between what graduates are taught at university and the short-term usable skills favoured by the labour market. The goals of higher education have long been defined in a very general sense without sufficient acknowledgement of the changing nature of the economy and society. Do universities educate students to obtain knowledge for the sake of it? Or should they focus exclusively on practical skills? Investigation of these questions is complicated by the fact that an objective judgement on what constitutes useful knowledge at the current stage of China’s development is debatable. The general competencies targeted by the higher education sector are ill defined, and this has subsequently had a negative influence on the curriculum and pedagogy.

The second constraint points to the role of career services within universities. In recognition of the congestion of the graduate labour market, universities have made efforts to develop their career services to provide support to students. The range of support provided mainly includes collecting and distributing information related to job vacancies, providing career guidance and consultation, and managing other administrative issues. While university career service centres do build a connection between students and the labour market, their effectiveness has been limited by an insufficient number of specialists, support staff and function spaces. This is not surprising. Many universities were not well-prepared for the large intake of students in the first place and borrowed heavily to develop the necessary resources to accommodate changes. Fixing this will involve increasing educational funds and improving regulations.

The third constraint relates to the extent to which universities interact with other agencies to improve the graduate labour market system. The current two-level system of managing higher education institutes builds upon other policy shifts that aimed to reduce direct intervention from the government. The two-level system means universities are managed by the central or provincial governments, with provincial governments playing the major role. This means that for universities geographically located in municipal cities or towns, their administrative rank is higher than that of the local bureaucracies that are in charge of education, human resources or social securities. This limits communications and hinders the kind of cooperation that would allow them to provide a more diversified channel for sharing information and synergising resources.

The daunting job market for university graduates affects many beyond just the students and their families that have invested heavily in higher education. Job-hunt difficulties mask several problems within the system itself that may impact on people’s confidence in the reforms that are designed, implemented and planned during China’s transition. They may also affect social stability and challenge the younger generation’s confidence in whether the ‘China Dream’ — a set of ideals which aspires toward national rejuvenation and the improvement of livelihoods — is within their reach. Tackling this issue will require a holistic approach that takes into account the wider context of national economic and social transition.

Shuang Ren is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Ethical Leadership, University of Melbourne

3 responses to “Who is to blame for the worst graduate job market in China’s history?”

  1. In addition to the constraints identified above, any significant unemployment particularly highly educated university graduates, should be a concern to the governments at both central and provincial levels.
    Given that China has used selective measures/indicators to promote people, why don’t the governments include unemployment in the measures for promoting university leaders and provincial leaders, as well as some central departments officials?
    It would force universities to do a much better job according to market demand. Linking employment of university graduates would also reform government administration in higher education and raise efficiency in education investment.

    • Thanks for the comment, Lintong. Well,both the central and local governments have acknowledged the challenges university graduates face when seeking jobs and the implications for the educational sector, the economy and society at large.
      In many universities, their leaders and staff’s performance evaluation has been linked to the employment rate of graduates. But the employability and employment opportunities of university graduates are complex and mark many different issues. Looking at the supply and demand side of the labour market. Universities are a key supplier of talented people to the labour market. There comes an issue as to how much capacity universities (well, and government agents) have to influences the flunctation in the demand side of the labour market. There also comes an issue whether the key strategic players in the supply side of the labour market take full responsibility for the unemployment of graduates. Another consideration is the availability of employment rates of university graduates-are they available to the public, to what extent the public can access these data, how reliable these data are ..etc. Tackling the challenges China is facing regarding the career prospects of university students requires a holistic thinking.

  2. In the USA, depending on the CEOs’ attitude, hiring is a feast or fast. When the economy is good and there is plenty of candidates, the companies go on a hiring spree. When the economy is bad, corporations don’t hire. Nowadays, due to corporate malfeasance, companies don’t want to hire workers on a full-time, permanent basis in order to keep their profits up plus have totally dis-invest in America and complain about lack of skilled workers and blame the government for what they did to the economy.

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