Students are encouraged to continue with further studies
More than a third of this summer's 112,300 graduates in Guangdong are still out of work - a problem being seen across the mainland, where rapidly expanding universities are turning out more people than the job market can absorb.
To ease unemployment woes, Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou is encouraging students to enrol in postgraduate programmes. It also says they should lower their salary expectations and take private-sector positions more seriously.
'Only 30 to 40 per cent of our graduates go on to postgraduate programmes, compared with 80 per cent at Peking University and Tsinghua University,' said Li Rui, the information director of Sun Yat-sen's graduate employment centre.
'We want to expand our postgraduate programme because the demand for postgraduates [in the market place] exceeds supply,' Mr Li said. He said 97 per cent of postgraduates who had done further studies had found jobs last year, compared with 93 per cent of those with just one degree. So far this year, those figures stand at 94 per cent and 89 per cent.
Mr Li said that of this year's graduating class of 4,600 students from Sun Yat-sen University, 500 had yet to find jobs. Next year, the graduating class will swell to 6,800.
The unemployment situation is particularly serious because the first batch of students from an expanded intake in 1999 graduated this year. But he said, aside from the expanded intake, graduates' overly high salary expectations and attitude problems were keeping them from finding jobs.
