China Tells

10 years ago, it would be a superior honor for a young kid to receive an offer from a college in China. Such a social recognition has a deep root from history. The traditional view is that to become a college student is a first critical step towards wealth, power and social status – in other words, prosperity, for the student himself, and his/her family. A lot of old Chinese sayings can be found to express this view, such as ‘those who study well become governors’. Therefore if a kid receives an offer from a renowned university in China, such as Qinghua University of Beijing University, the whole village will cheer up and celebrate.

Such a notion, however, is being challenged in the recent two years. When those lucky kids graduate from the university after four years of study, unfortunately they find themselves unwanted on the job market (See Article from NYT). It is reported that there are three million college students graduating from schools every year, and only one third might be able to find a job. In some regions, college graduates are much less welcome than migrant workers who don’t need any sort of education but stamina. Guangdong province, China’s biggest manufacturing and export base, is clearly short of hard labor but flooded with college graduates.

Is China’s education system to blame? IT is a highly debatable topic. On one hand, the Ministry of Education did decide to expand the enrollment of universities country wide about five years ago, which is one of the reasons why there are so many graduates on the job market now. It can be argued that the market did not need so many ‘educated labor’ in the first place, therefore by expanding the enrollment of universities, it delays the pain of ‘uncompetitive’ students. If those students were not offered a position in universities in the first place, and went for alternative solutions, be it poly, professional training school, or started working, we probably won’t see such a tremendous pressure for college students to locate a job. On the other hand, however, doesn’t everyone deserve a chance to be educated? The ‘incompetent’ candidates might not score high enough during the college entrance examination, but isn’t there a good chance that their competence improves after four years of college education? If college is only one of the steps during one’s life long learning curve, then it should not be restrained to only a limited small group.

By offering a good reason to expand the enrollment of universities, however, does not mean universities have done a good job in offering a satisfactory education service. In fact, most people’s first reaction is exactly the opposite. The courses provided in universities have been complained to be out of date and useless, and the college admin does not do much other than collecting fees towards the students. For a kid to spend four years from 18 to 22 in a college doing nothing, it would be a huge waste from every angle.

To reform or not, it is a big question lying ahead of China’s universities.