Alarming drop in Chinese graduates landing jobs
As universities annually pump out triple the graduates they groomed a decade ago, the proportion landing jobs has fallen to an alarming new low
Yang Biao has spent every weekend for the past two months at job fairs. The 25-year-old, who will finish a Chinese literature degree at Beijing University of Technology in July, has also sent out nearly 200 job applications.
Yang is one of a record nearly seven million students who will graduate from mainland universities this year and enter the job market during a marked economic slowdown.
By early this month, 52.4 per cent of mainland students about to graduate had signed job contracts, down seven percentage points on the same time last year. In the industrial hub of Guangdong, the rate was 46 per cent, and in Beijing, home to such top universities as Peking and Tsinghua, it was just 33.6 per cent.
What we're required to learn at the private training schools is exactly what we should have been taught at university, especially during our last semester
Graduates majoring in English, law, computer science and technology, accounting, international trade and industrial and commercial administration are finding it harder to find jobs.