Another conversation in China part 1
Last week I was teaching in China and a college professor told me that while China's economy is growing strong, the number of unemployment among college graduates is also reaching all time high and it poses a serious problem. He said: “Today the average college educated earns about $350 dollars a month but an uneducated labor worker also makes $310 dollars a month. To many college students, it is NOT worth to invest in higher education anymore. Can you imagine spending 4 years in college than only making few dollars more than someone with limited education? ”
He explained: “For many years, our government is pushing education as a priority so college enrollment has increased about seven times in the past ten years. Our universities graduate about six million students a year but there is no plan for supporting them with better jobs. Everything in China is still focusing on building more manufacturing facilities, freeways, bridges, and infrastructures where labor workers are needed. Because we can build product at least 30% cheaper than in the U.S or Europe so export manufactured products is a good business. More export makes our economy stronger and it requires more labor workers. As the demand continues to grow, the wages of labor workers continues to increase and reach all time high this year. However, there are limited works for college graduates, their wages remain flat and eventually a college degree is worthless in this labor-oriented job market. If this situation continues, we will be a country of labor workers and nothing else”.
When I asked another friend, who owns a software company in Beijing. He was angry: “The problem is NOT the job market but the disorder in the education system. The current higher education system is based on a hierarchical with few elite universities on top and many local universities at the lower position. The elite universities are very selective and have limited enrollment but local universities must accommodate many students to meet government's quota. Elite universities receive strong government supports for research but local universities are left to rely on local government's supports. This unbalanced view led to the deterioration of the education system. Today there is a severe shortage of qualified professors. Good professors go to elite schools where they enjoy better salaries, better funding for research, and limited number of students in classes. Local universities have to hire whoever they can get to teach in large classrooms with many students. Because of the lower wages, many professors have to teach at more than one school which exhaust them. Some have to engage in “private tutoring” to supplement their incomes and these activities keep them so busy so they are always behind the technology trend. Local universities have NO incentive to improve current training so professors are teaching the same things they learned many years ago, which are already obsolete. My company needs software engineers but local universities only produce programmers and testers. I have asked them to change their trainings so I can hire their students but they could not change because everybody is so busy. The elite schools have better students but the number of graduates are limited. Most demand better salaries and prefer to work for foreign companies where they can work oversea. The problem in China today is there are many good jobs but few qualify. It is NOT the job market but the problem is with the education system.”
A friend who worked in an import/export business has different opinion: “With many foreign companies opening offices in China, most local universities favor “Office training programs” such as accounting, administration, international commerce, clerical, secretary, and foreign language interpreters etc. These programs require modest resources, easy to find teachers, easy to teach, and they attract more students so they are profitable. Students can find jobs easily although wages are low. Basically, this kind of job market really do NOT require college education and it is NOT good for China's future as these jobs are depending too much on foreign companies. Few years ago, we experienced that situation during the financial crisis when foreign companies stopped hiring and laid-off workers, suddenly there were million of unemployed workers in a matter of few months. With the global market developing, China should develop “Knowledge workers” where we do NOT depend on foreigners but can position ourselves globally. As a country, we should look further to the future rather than react to the current job market. We must focus more on science and technology to find better opportunities for our students where there are great demand for their knowledge and skills. Today we have several million college graduates whom cannot find jobs. We have million college graduates who are working in areas that do not require college degrees, many are making no more than labor workers. At the same time, there are a lot of good jobs but few qualify. Basically it is the problem of long term planning versus short term gain,”
Another friend who was educated in the U.S but returned home to teach at a national university explained: “The problem is about the past and the present. The current education system is still focusing on the past which used tests to measure knowledge. It was invented thousand years ago to select government officials for the emperor. However, overtime it evolved into a system where one is tested for their memorization instead. The College Entrance Exam is a good example of this archaic principle as it determines which college students can attend and what kind of field they can study. Because of this old tradition, students, parents, and teachers are focusing on how to get good grades and passing tests rather than developing skills. Since very young age, children are taught to memorize things so they can get good grades in tests. The result is that many college graduates have high grades but low skills, they have good grades in school but do not know how to apply them at work. For many years of learning by memorization, their brains are “locked into a pattern” that do not allow them to think of anything but “Book-knowledge”. This is why there are limited innovations or inventions in China even the government has spent billion dollars for research and development. Chinese students know how to copy, know how to follow, know how to improve existing things but cannot invent new things. That is why in the IT area, most students are good at programming and testing but NOT good at designing, architecting or helping customers to solve problems. When foreign companies move to China, most are having difficult time finding qualified workers. Chinese companies also reported that lacking of qualified workers was the biggest barrier to their expansion to global market. Unless the education system can be improved quickly by adapting a new learning system and abandon the excessive testing of the past, thing will NOT improve. However, it will be very difficult for a country with thousand years of tradition”.
I mentioned that to a friend who works for government. He said: “Of course, there are many opinions from different views. The issue is NOT about who is correct as they all have good insights but you have to understand that globalization is a new thing and needs further investigation and we should not hurry to draw conclusion. We know about the high unemployment among college graduates but we cannot focus on a few and ignore the mass. The demand for labor workers is rising fast but our labor workforce is shrinking due to the policy of one child per family. Sometime in the near future we will NOT have enough labor workers, especially at the lower level positions and the bottom end of the wages. We will have to bring in more workers from Vietnam, Burma, Bangladesh and other nearby countries. The problem is that we are so successful, our economy is growing fast and we cannot solve all problems so we must focus on a few higher priority”.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
