Chinese University Graduates: All Dressed Up and No Place to Go
February 25th, 2008 | by This is China! |
Decades ago, when I was an undergraduate in University, my paternal grandfather and I used to have countless talks whenever I was on-break from Cornell. Actually, he did most of the talking. I just listened, like the dutiful grandson and namesake that I was. He was bound to his bed by the amputation of both legs, and bound to inner-city Philadelphia by a lack of education and opportunity. He had been a garbage man by trade, for some forty years, and had brought up all six of his children himself after his wife died, when the youngest son was two years old. I admired him a great deal, if for no other reason than he was one of the funniest men I (still) have ever met in my life. He was also one of the wisest.
Sometime during every bedside talk of ours before he passed away he would come round to saying, “Boy, what you going to school for? You got to get a trade!” At the time, I was studying Physics, which seemed like a good idea since I liked and was good at Physics and Maths in high school. He figured it was a pretty useless pursuit; but then, he thought University was a waste of time in general.
Strangely, Chinese students that are graduating in droves are more and more of my grandfather’s mind, as well. More of them than ever before are graduating from three- and four-year college, and fewer per capita are finding jobs. According to a Xinhua report last year:
“The number of graduates will increase by 22 percent over the previous year to reach 4.13 million while the job market can only soak up 1.66 million new graduates, down 22 percent on the previous year.”
I was recently talking with a Chinese student who attends Suzhou University. Jennifer (not her real name) will be graduating next year. She is not looking forward to jumping into the new-graduate mosh-pit for job hunting. She said, “Perhaps forty- to fifty-percent of graduates are not finding jobs. There’s just too many graduates now, and not enough jobs.”
The China Daily cited in a recent report:
The Education and Economic Research Institute of Peking University and the Institute for Higher Education recently issued the “2007 employment situation for college graduates” survey results. The investigation revealed that the employment rate of graduates in 2007 reached 70%; the average starting salary for graduates was 1,798 yuan; and half of graduates received less than 1,500 yuan. The employment rate of college graduates is worse than that of junior college students.
“Three years ago,” Jennifer said, “people were impressed if you said you were going to University. They would ask, ‘What are you studying?’ And if it was a subject that required a lot of work – like engineering – they would say, ‘Wah! Good for you!’ Now, if they ask you what you’re doing and you say you are studying in University they say, ‘What for?’” It’s become an embarrassment in today’s Chinese society to be “wasting time” with study when you could – and should, many believe – be out making money.
“When we graduate now,” Jennifer told me, “if we can find an opening, it will pay only between 1000rmb and 2000rmb (about US$140 to US$285) per month. The feeling is: why did we spend all that time in school to get so little money?
“Some companies whose business is not good at the time will higher graduates as sales people for a few months, until the business is good again. Those kind of jobs pay about 1000rm each month.
“If you go down to bar street in Suzhou,” she continued, “a lot of the girls that work the bars are college graduates. They just cannot find a job otherwise.” Jennifer was not referring to barmaids or waitresses, I knew, but to escorts in Karaoke parlors and hookers in what we call in these parts “chicken bars.”
But some students – either through the necessity of making ends meet, or because they enjoy the good things in life, cannot wait. Jennifer explained, “Some girls take money from men who take photos of them. The girls are usually art students: they like to buy pretty things and like to look fashionable.
“That’s why Suzhou University has such a bad reputation. If you go down to the gates of the University on a Saturday morning,” she said, “you will see men in cars waiting for girls they’ve hired to escort them for the day and evening. Sometimes, the cars are driven by young guys who will take the girls to the man. The girls can get 1000rmb to 2000rmb for the day.”
Jennifer added, “Students today are more and more preferring to take a 3-year college degree. The programs tend to be vocational training: accounting, or operator job, or even computer graphics. The students waste less time than the regular four-year University, and they may even be able to find a job more quickly because they have a skill.”
What all this means for Western companies invested in China that are already finding it difficult to hire qualified staff is that it may actually become more difficult to hire individuals with credentials and qualifications who have the quality and depth of experience Western companies require. As graduates find it more difficult to find jobs out of school, they will gravitate to jobs that do not build their professional base, but that do pay the bills – and allow them some of the niceties that they see advertised on television and on neon signs. Of course, the lack of talent will only push salaries up, as companies compete for those without Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), who have some relevant experience, and who – most importantly – will stay in the job for at least the 18 months it takes a company to realize its return on its investment in hiring.
Employers will also have to deal with an increasing number of little emperors and empresses who, because of upbringing, have higher expectations than their forebears; and, because of university diplomas, have higher expectations for pay and role than their experience merits.
Those who will be the best hires for companies will indeed be those who took some kind of vocational training, who actually have skills they practiced before joining a company; those whose programs were sponsored by corporations will be the most valuable, as they would have been indoctrinated into systems and methods that leave little room for personal indulgence.
Though clearly a grumpy old black paraplegic was in no way prophetic about today’s China employment crisis, he did at least impress me with an age-old truism that also crosses international boundaries. God bless him.
Bill Dodson
SUZHOU, China
Further reading:
Degree no job guarantee in China, L.A. Times
Despite economic boom, Chinese graduates face struggle for jobs, The Guardian
