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Reasons for Employment Bottleneck
Since 1999, universities in China began massive student recruitment in an effort to prepare more workers for a 21st century economy. Since then, China’s college enrollment rate grew at an average of 20-percent annually. And as the number of college graduates heading into the job market increased, so did the difficulty in finding a job.
A: About thirty years ago, it was or seemed relatively easier for a new graduate to get a job. Would you agree?
Z: Yes, on the whole we can say that, but the situation is quite different.
A: What it has changed? We should talk little bit about there is a big boom in the enrollment expansion in the late 90s. Was it that people are pointing the finger at for making it tougher for students to get jobs?
Z: Sometimes we heard about that, how the high education expansion makes it more difficult for graduates to find a job. But I don’t think the expansion of education could be a black sheep. We can’t say all it is because of expansion. If we have no expansion of high education, maybe our economic situation will not be so good. In the past 30 years, we found there was a very great change. We transferred from elite high education to universal high education in shanghai. In other countries, their job expectation maybe gets reduced in the 3rd generations. The first generation said,“When I graduated, I would be the ministers”. The second generation said,“When I graduated, I would be the directors”. But now the generation in other countries, the graduates, they will say,“oh, if I can get a job as driver, still I can work”.
A: Even with university degree?
Z: Yes, even with university degree, in other country I said.
A: OK.
Z: Right. They do not think graduate means the top. Right? But our high education developed very quickly, just in one generation, in 30 years. When I come to university, only 1% of people have the chance to go to university. Right? But now, almost all the people, if you want to come to university, then you go in different ways. You can have high education. So things have changed. But for the parents, they sometimes saw why I should let my children come to university. Because I want them to be the officials. Because Chinese people, they have a very old tradition. Learn to be official. Why you should come to university? Because you want to be officials.
A: We have such a high enrollment. All those kids going to school can’t think they can be official.
Z: They should change. But it doesn’t only say I don’t want to be official and that’s enough. They should change other ideas about to graduate.
A: Students need to realize that they have to lower their expectations maybe a little, and change what they thought.
Z: Yes, change their expectations. We found almost all the students, no matter in the very top universities or very general universities or colleges, every level tries to reduce their financial expectations.
For the past several years, China’s GDP witnessed double-digit growth. Take 2005 to 2007 for example, the GPD grew at an average rate of 11%, but the employment growth rate for college graduates dropped by 1.45% during the same period.
A: A lot of other countries, their GDP is between 2 and 3 percent. So they are able to absorb new college graduates somewhat easily. Shanghai, the GDP’s even higher but we are so not seeing students are getting absorbed well. Do you agree with this?
Z: The situation is totally different. Although we can say even in the United States and UK, their annual raise of the GDP is not high. But the GDP itself is very large. For example, in China, the GDP per capita is only 10 thousand US$, but GDP per capita in the USA or UK maybe is 100 thousand. So it means a lot. This is one reason. So in our GDP development, in average one GDP, we need more workers. But in other countries, they already come to a very stable situation. The raise of their GDP was not so high. But they still need a lot of people. But in our country, we have a very large GDP. But the sum money is not so much. So in the regions, their incomes are very low. So usually we use a lot of workers to do that job. So when the financial hard time comes, we have the most serious problems in the employment. So this is one. But the situation is very complex.
A: I think it goes together. We talk about the enrollment boom in the last 30 yeas. Chinese economy has changed in the last 30 years. There are a lot growth grades. Is it still catching up?
Z: For the advanced or say developed countries, we still have a long way to go, very large miles to go. In the developed countries, maybe they are 10 or 20 times as large as Chinese. If we come to the GDP per capita, it is even large. So this is one problem. In China, we still have a very large population. This is quite different from other countries. The population, they will fluid. So they come from a very bad area. They have very low income. They have very few people. They all come to the cities, very large metropolitans.
A: Let’s talk about the big cities because we talked about the numbers of students that will be coming to Shanghai and obviously Beijing as the same thing. What can they expect when they get to a large city like that? Coz there is not a lot of jobs for all the students to take.
Z: Yes, I notice that. When I study history, western history of education and social development, we find that in the beginning period of the industrialization, in no matter which countries, all the people will come to cities. They will try to find jobs, chances in the city.
A: So what do you suggest those students who want to come to Shanghai or Beijing or big cities to get job? Should they necessarily consider going somewhere else?
Z: Yes. In fact, we just try to do that. I said, in the state, the government has one program,‘try to be volunteer to come to the west’. If all the people come to Shanghai, who should contribute to the rural areas? Just like a lot of overseas Chinese, they come to the foreign countries and then build China. The same reasons! But anyhow for the individuals, they have the right to choose the place they stay and the work they want.
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