Graduates poorly equipped for harsh job market
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[By Liu Rui/Global Times] |
One of the critical factors for judging the quality of a university is how many of its graduates find jobs.
The ideals of the ivory tower, detached from everyday life and dedicated to pure academic accomplishment, are a fine thing, but the Chinese public takes a grimly utilitarian attitude toward education.
And, given that Chinese universities are funded with public money, they need to answer to these needs; graduate job prospects are the single most important factor in students' decision as to which college to attend.
The difficulty that some graduates are having in finding jobs suggests there's a worrying gap between the skills that the universities equip them with and the demands of the market. This doesn't mean that the education system has failed, but shows that this gap needs to be closed and higher education needs to adjust to meet the needs of a transforming job market.
Blaming either students or teachers for the plummeting graduate employment rate is an exercise in futility. The mass expansion of Chinese higher education in the last three decades has simply left too many graduates competing for too few posts.
While once a university education was a guaranteed walk-in to a job, now even graduates of the top universities find themselves fighting for a limited number of positions. There are steps that universities can take to help students adjust to the new realities.
Right now, the Chinese job market is skewed toward the hard sciences and practical disciplines such as engineering and information technology, due to the heavy emphasis upon construction, manufacturing, and extracting resources. The humanities are often a more tempting option for students, but don't necessarily equip them with the skills needed to survive in a hotly competitive marketplace.
As the Chinese economy transforms, emerging tertiary industries in the service sector will require skills more commonly associated with the humanities, and they certainly cannot be neglected. China will need high-quality managers, thinkers, and public intellectuals in the future with a broad mixture of classical education, practical experience, and professional skills.
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