Education policy-making

From 1900 to 1911, China abolished the civil service examination system and established a modern schooling system based on Western models.

• In 1922 China adopted the American model, and this dominated the Chinese higher education system until 1949.
• In 1952 all of the higher education institutions were brought under the jurisdiction of the communist government, and the Soviet model was adopted to restructure China's higher education system in order to serve the manpower needs for building a socialist China.
• In 1958 China made its first attempt to expand the higher education sector by establishing more than 23,500 after-hours part work, part study colleges, in order to make an ambitious economic growth plan possible - the so-called Great Leap Forward for Socialist Construction.
• After 1978, with the end of the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76, China restored its higher education system and started educational reforms along with the move to a market-oriented socialist economy.^[26] In 1985 the central government announced its reform plan, and embarked upon a decentralization process which gave local government and higher education institutions more autonomy.^[27]
• In 1993 the government launched further reform measures to increase accessibility to higher education, and a "user-pay" system was implemented along with fundamental changes in the job assignment system.
• From 1993 to 1998, higher education developed on the basis of numbers being controlled and limited, and quality being improved. The unduly low proportion of students in the tertiary sector brought out the negative impact on Chinese economic growth.
• In 1998, the Declaration of the World Conference on Higher Education organized by UNESCO in Paris made the Chinese government aware that a rapid increase in the enrollment figures in higher education would be a way to respond to the needs of opening up and meeting the requirements of economic and social development.^[28]
• In 1999 the government decided to accelerate the pace of expansion, and enrollments in higher education institutions increased dramatically and continuously. The enrollment number in 1999 was 1,678,000 which increased 47% by 1998. In 2004 the number is 4,473,400 with the rate of 17.05%^[2] Student numbers climbed from 7.23 million in 2000 to 9.31 million in 2001 and 11.46 million in 2002. The figure in 2004 indicated almost four times as many enrollments as in 1998.^[29] And according to Limin Bai, the establishment of the elite universities project called "211", using large amounts of government funding, made it difficult for non-elite colleges to survive. This caused an increase in tuition fees and affected the quality of higher education, which in turn influenced the employment of graduates.^[30]

Economic development

Since 1978, the government has been reforming its economy from a Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented economy to increase productivity, living standards, and technological quality without exacerbating inflation, unemployment, and budget deficits.^[31]

China's economy regained momentum in the early 1990s. The Asian Financial Crisis of 1998–99 influenced the economy by slowing growth and as a consequence experts submitted proposals to state organs to stimulate economic recovery. This involved increasing student numbers and intensifying the modification of education as a way of stimulating internal consumption.

The unemployment rate of graduates

In 2008, the unemployment rate of graduates was more than 30%.^[32] In this year the unemployment rate of graduates from top universities was 10%.^[33]

In 2009, the employment rate of graduates who had bachelor's degree was in the 88% range.^[34]

In 2010, the employment rate of college graduates rose 3.2% in 2009 reaching 91.2%.^[35]

in 2012, Prime Minister Zhu warned that increased foreign competition brought by China's entry into the World Trade Organization could lead to a doubling of the official urban unemployment rate over the next few years from 3.5% to 7%, or around 30 million people.^[36]

In 2013, data released by the Chinese government indicated that the rate of graduate unemployment was 33.6%.^[37]

In 2014, based on official Chinese date, roughly 15% of the new grads are unemployed six months after graduation. However, Cheng, a professor of political science states the authentic unemployment is actually 2.3 million which means the rate is around 30%.^[38]

Summary

China's higher education system prior to the 1999 expansion was not prepared for large-scale growth as it was basically characterized as "education for examinations," and the reforms in the 1990s did not change this feature. The lack of diversity in curricula at different levels and in different divisions of higher education determined that graduates lacked the specialty and the flexibility to respond to market demand. Moreover, before the 1999 expansion, a national job market had not yet been established. With a focus on immediate economic growth, the policy makers appear to have made the 1999 expansion decision without a big picture of the future structure of China's market-oriented economy, and without knowing in which economic sectors manpower needs would increase.

Regional disparities

China has had a long history of regional disparities, and disparities between urban and rural areas. Disparities in economic development are paralleled by disparities in higher education: top universities, for instance, are all located in those regions such as Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. Such disparities in education are reflected in both quality and quantity.^[2] In addition, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Sociology and Social Sciences Documentation Publishing House jointly published the social blue book 2014 Chinese Social Situation Analysis and Prediction,^[39] which released a set of employment survey reports based on 1678 graduates from 12 universities.^[40] As is shown in the blue book, two months after graduation, the unemployment rate of undergraduates from rural families is higher than undergraduates from urban families, which is 30.5%.

Measures taken by the government to solve the problem

The Chinese government has taken some measures to try to solve the crisis and it hopes injecting huge investments into the economy will create jobs and relieve much of the pressure. But some experts predict that building infrastructure will only provide manual jobs for ordinary workers and will not benefit college graduates.

Another measure is to boost postgraduate enrollments. The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China plans to expand enrollments of masters students by 5% and doctoral students by 1.7%. Given the decline in jobs, many graduates will choose to study further and this year almost 1.25 million first degree-holders will be taking the postgraduate entrance examinations.

Yet expanding postgraduate enrollments cannot solve the problem of graduate unemployment as it can only offer some relief or postpone the current employment pressure. Indeed, in recent years, employment of master's degree graduates has become problematic. Diverting graduates to rural areas is a third measure. But a vast gap exists between urban and rural areas in terms of developmental level, opportunities, and living conditions. Thus, most graduates prefer to work in cities.

To encourage them to go to the countryside, the government has come up with policies such as preferential treatment when graduates (after two years service) apply to become government officials, or extra points are added to their scores in examinations for graduate study. But these policies are not attractive given the low salaries graduates earn in country areas.

The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China has recently been calling for the whole society, including overseas Chinese, to contribute ideas to improve education overall. Promoting creative and vocational education has been raised as a way of providing new graduates with creative education and job skills to meet the needs of the market and to face the challenges of a changing world in the decades to come.

Perhaps this approach constitutes a more fundamental strategy that will eventually solve the graduate employment problem, although the impact is likely to take many years to become apparent.^[32] China's education department has already stated clearly that it wants to turn 600 universities into polytechnics, in order to give students more technical and employment-related curriculum, instead of only providing academic and theoretical subjects.^[38]

Criticism of graduate unemployment

The employment situation for new college graduates is different from the working population in general. The graduate unemployment crisis in China represents a wasteful investment of scarce resources. Large sums of money have consequently been invested in educating unemployed graduates which could otherwise have been invested in job-creating productive programmes. With a flood of new graduates, individuals are having a tough time finding jobs in an increasingly competitive labor market. Furthermore， it produces permanent scars on youth. Farlie and Kletzer (1999) estimated that being unemployed while young results in lower future earnings by a magnitude of 8.4% and 13.0% for males and females, respectively. Meanwhile, graduates have some negative expectations under the pressure of seeking jobs. Nanjing Normal University has surveyed students who expected to graduate in 2006 about "College Student's Attitudes about Job Seeking and Career". 44.21% prefer to get an employment contract first, then consider pursuing a new job position which is what they really desire to be employed for an average of 2 years.^[41] This phenomenon not only causes underemployment and high turnover in the job market, but also, graduates will have lower levels of job satisfaction, work commitment, job involvement and internal work motivation. Obviously, these of problems will bring more risks for employers as well.

Another widespread criticism is that, since the acceleration of enrollment starting from 1999, many schools, which were originally vocational ones, have been turned into universities. This has resulted in the number of university increasing greatly, which also means an increase in graduates with university degrees. But the truth is that the quality of these students' education is often even lower than vocational school graduates. The reason is that vocational school graduates have technical abilities which university graduates often lack. It's quite common that universities often put more emphasis on academic research rather than teaching practical skills required for jobs, which employers often value. What is more, some employers only pay attention to graduates from prestigious universities, which result in the decrease of competences of normal college graduates. In order to solve this, it is said that the Chinese government is considering restoring these so-called Sanben universities to what they originally were.

Responses to criticism

Graduate unemployment will be more likely to promote educational inflation. Half of graduates would like to consider attending postgraduate schools to enhance their ability to seek expert jobs. Government interventions are designed to alleviate graduate unemployment by encouraging young job seekers to "Go west, go down to where motherland and people are in greatest need."^[42]

The China Youth Daily has reported that some graduates have worked for years in villages of Hainan, China's most southerly province. In 2003, the Communist Youth League recruited over 50,000 graduates to provide volunteer service in education, health care, agriculture, and cultural development in western provinces. As well as receiving a stipend, a State Council circular issued in 2005 promised the graduate volunteers preferential policies in civil service tests and graduate school entrance exams. Moreover, graduates had an opportunity to be self-employed as the Chinese government launched policies which were formulated to encourage college graduates to carve out their own future.^[43] However, many college graduates remain underemployed or unemployed even after completing their advanced degree.