570,000 graduates unemployed, and Why so?

Nearly 570,000 graduates are still unemployed and more than 100,000 graduates live on their parents among the 6.082 million college students graduated in 2011, according to a blue book on Chinese college graduates employment, which was released on Monday.

The "2011 Annual Report on the Employment of Chinese College Graduates," compiled by MyCos Institute and published by the Social Sciences Academic Press, provides a comprehensive analysis on employment of college students who graduated in 2011.

According to the report, besides the 82.1 percent of graduates in full-or part-time jobs, and 1.6 percent starting their own business, there were still 9.3 percent of the graduates left jobless. Among those unemployed, 1.1 percent prepare for further studies abroad, 6.1 percent continue to seek a job while 2.1 percent have given up either choice.

One reason behind unemployment is unpopularity of grassroots jobs among graduates.

On the one hand, blind enrollment increase of certain majors has resulted in talent excessiveness; on the other, some graduates refuse to work as start-ups, which also contribute to a burden on employment, said Cai Yanhou, professor of Central South University, based in south China's Hunan province.

As the difficulty in securing a job grows, more students graduated in 2011 decided to go to postgraduate schools, 2.5 percent higher than that in 2010.

Many have to pursue postgraduate education just to evade employment pressure.

Professor Cai, also chief expert on college studies with cuaa.net, a network for alumni associations in China, believed it was only an expediency as students will still have to face the same problem when finishing graduate school.

But it is also reasonable to pursue postgraduate education in a time of economic recession, after all, strengthened competency will help to boost one's competitiveness in job hunting.

Structural unemployment also contributes to the bleak situation. The problem of demands exceeding actual needs still exists in some majors.

According to the report, college majors can be divided into two categories in terms of salary, employment rate and unemployment risk. One is the so-called "red major", which is referred to the majors pointing to lower salary and lower employment rate, but higher at risk to lose job. The opposite side is the "green major."

Nine red majors in 2012 include animation, law science, English literature, and international economy and trade.

The major with the highest unemployment risk rate is bioscience and bioengineering, which is 14.9 percent. Fine arts ranks the second, with only two percent lower.
On the other side, ten other majors were listed as green majors to greet increasing employment rate. These include geological engineering, harbor, water channels and coastal engineering, mining engineering and ocean engineering and petroleum engineering.

Engineering majors topped all majors with an employment rate of 92.5 percent.

A drove of graduates in 2011 flooded to the following professions, in order, sales business, accounting for 10.9 percent, followed by financing, auditing, taxation, statistics and logistics.
But what cause the situation?

According to Professor Cai, colleges and universities enroll students referring to employment prospect, which explains why the so-called hot majors with potentially high employment prospect become lowest-hanging fruit for the blind enrollment increase. And this also gives rise to talent excessiveness in certain majors, driving graduates to “red major” as a result.

It is all graduates' dream to find a job that could not only tune in their own majors but also interest them and bring out what they learned in college. But the sad truth is no matter how splendid the dream is, reality tends to be dim.
 

By Wang Qi, Sina English