Making education useful for employment
- Source: Global Times
- [02:01 March 11 2010]
- Comments
By Wu Mian
Debate is a good way to approach the truth, as long as everyone involved understands the issue.
This Monday, New York Times website started a debate on "Educated and fearing the future in China" and invited five scholars specializing on China to share their opinion on why Chinese college graduates couldn't find proper jobs. The most striking argument was the disproportionate development between urban China and rural China.
Professor Cindy Fan of University of California, Los Angeles, believed that "young people from smaller places and rural areas…are likely eager to go to or stay in big cities," where all resources and companies are located. Professor Yasheng Huang from Massachusetts Institute of Techology supported her, saying "the opportunities are created in the wrong places. College educates students, but in China they also give a young person a formal right to move to an urban center." In They think China's ruralurban gap lures people to the big cities.
This problem is universal, not only in China. People have a natural tendency to seek better lives.
Just like cattle would go where the water is, people move to good work locations. In the urbanizing era, cities are the destination.
Uneven development may explain why urban density is increasing. This does not explain why college graduates can't find jobs.
Chinese graduates can't find jobs because there simply aren't enough positions outside the manufacturing industry. After 30 years of openingup, China still relies heavily on exports, which require little of skills and knowledge. So when young talents walk out of the campus, they find it hard to fit in a society where much of the work is still marginal and laborintensive, and not brainintensive.
To tackle the problem, the government needs to restructure the economy. The root cause of graduate unemployment is that our economy, as the engine of job creation, is unable to absorb manpower created by universities.
A human resources manager said that compared to college graduates in Hong Kong or Singapore, mainland students are much less professionallyprepared. Many of them would hesitate when asked "What do you want to achieve?" or "Why did you choose this job?" for they have never thought about it before.
Our education system doesn't encourage students to shape themselves into what is demanded by the market. It is only when the graduation ceremony approaches do most students begin to panic.
There is much that the university career centers can do for students than just posing job information online and dealing with the graduation papers. They should start preparing the students at an early stage, guide them to find out what they are good at and how to turn their strengths into something that can fit into the job market.
The dilemma graduates face today is a longterm issue, which involves a change of objectives and emphasis in higher education in China.
We should prepare to deal with it in the long run.
