China's education crisis
For the past decade, the number of students go to university in China have quadruple to several millions per year. Most Chinese parents believed by sending their children to college, they should have better opportunities than previous generation. But result was not as they had expected as there was a large number of unemployed college graduates. According to the Daily China News, China's universities graduate over seven million students each year, more than ten times the number of graduates in the year 2000. But more than half of them could not find suitable jobs or had to work in jobs that were not required a college education. There were over 2.8 million unemployed college graduates each year and the number has accumulated to over 30 million unemployed college graduates with no hope of finding jobs or have better the future. (Data 2014)
Chinese government are worried that unemployed graduates could create problems if they cannot solve this problem. One proposed solution is to turn over 600 universities into vocational schools to provide employment-related skills. But this policy is facing a strong protest from university professors, students, and their parents. A mother told the newspapers: “They promise a bright future when my son goes to college and be an engineer. Now they want him to be a labor worker in construction. It is one step forward and five steps backward. What kind of policy is that?” Another mother lamented: “We spend a lot of money to send my son to college and hope that he will have better future. Now the only job that he can get is to work in steel factory. We do not need to pay for his extra tutorials to pass exams then end up in factory.” A father told the newspapers: “Today we are making progress by having taxi drivers with college degrees and construction labors have Master degree.”
Before 1990 most college graduates could find jobs in government sectors but with significant grow in number of graduates and rapid expansion of university in China, the numbers have outgrown what can be absorbed by government jobs. The private sector is weak and cannot absorb that many graduates then suddenly the college degree lost most of its value in society. Unemployed graduates have been burden for both society and their family as their parents still have to care for them but as their hope begin to fade, their anger increases and many young people start to get into trouble with anti-social behavior, crimes or involve in illegal drugs and alcohol. It is estimated that over 7 million of college graduates were drug addicts. (Data 2014)
There is a unique phenomenon in China called “The Ant tribe" or a large group of unemployed or under-employed college graduates so shameful to living off their family so they left home and create their own tribes, living off the street. According to sociologist Lian Si, whose wrote the famous book “The Ant Tribe” in 2010 in there he described the whole generation of college graduates who live together in the “underground” of big cities. These young people are considered the “underclass”, no better than the lowly social classes of peasants, migrant workers, and unemployed labor workers, despite they are college educated. Since the book was published the situation is getting worst. The government in Beijing estimates there are more than 160,000 "ant tribe" in the capital alone and a third of them graduated from China's prestigious universities. A researcher explained: “They were victims of bad government's policy to develop knowledge society by opened more universities and encouraged people to enroll but instead of developing technology industry to get them jobs when they graduate, the government were focusing more on constructions and manufacturing to benefit the short term economic growth where workers did not need college education.” A professor complained: “For many years, getting young people into universities was the strategy to help build the knowledge economy. But we never improved our education systems, we were still using the same curriculum developed in 1950s and 1960s; our college graduates have the same skills and knowledge of people who graduates forty or fifty years ago despite that we are now in the 21st century. Instead of developed technology skilled graduates, we are producing a whole generation of graduates who were good at passing tests and get degrees, but cannot do anything.”
Today most graduates cannot even get low paying jobs. They cannot compete with labor workers for jobs in industry as many considered labor jobs were below their levels. In other word, these unemployed college graduates were shut-out from society. Unhappiness, losing hope, depression have turned many into alcohol and drug addicts, some became thieves and prostitutes.” Recently, Chinese economists are warning about a "national crisis", a ticking time-bomb of unemployed youth unable to contribute to the economy and the plan to transform China from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge-economy will be jeopardized. A government officer declared: “There is no way to make this transition if we cannot solve this college graduate unemployment crisis.”
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
