College Degree no job guarantee in China

Los Angeles Times ^ | March 2, 2008 | Don Lee

[SeekAndFind]

WUHAN, CHINA -- Sun Yuanping skipped her college graduation ceremony for a job interview. It was all-day affair and the bookish 22-year-old felt good about it. After all, she has degrees in marketing and botany from well-regarded school in this central Chinese city, and she ranked in the top fifth of her class.

Sun never heard back from that prospective employer nor from dozens of other companies and government agencies where she has applied since she graduated in June. Recently, after tearful self-reflection and long nights tossing in bed, she pared down expectations and began sending her resume to small businesses offering salaries as low as $140 a month, a third of what she hoped to make.

As each jobless day passes and Sun lives off a $100 monthly allowance from her parents, she feels more and more guilty.

"All along, I thought if I went to a good university, everything would be fine," Sun said on a recent snowy afternoon. Her eyes welled with tears as she went on. "At first, it was hard to believe. I considered myself to be quite excellent. I'm struggling to accept this."

Until the start of this decade, a college degree in China put you in elite circles. The government arranged jobs for graduates in public agencies or state-owned enterprises. Unemployment wasn't an issue.

But of the nearly 5 million young people who graduated in June, about 1.45 million were still unemployed in the fall, according to a study published last month by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Researchers estimated that by year-end, about 75% of the recent graduates had found jobs.

China's graduate employment rate compares favorably with countries such as Japan, where 68% got jobs by the end of the year. No such comprehensive statistic exists for the United States.

[EagleUSA]

What? China has an unemployment problem? Oh God, CLOSE THE BORDERS, FAST !!!!

[silentreignofheroes]

Should we really give a rats butt about China,?

[mtbopfuyn]

A piece of paper doesn’t go very far if one isn’t personable enough or doesn’t interview well.

[martin_fierro]

They're hiring.

[mysterio]

Wow, China sounds almost as awesome as the globalists told me it was. Let’s send even more of our jobs there. And maybe we can borrow some money from them to expand our government. /s

[metmom]

Recently, after tearful self-reflection and long nights tossing in bed, she pared down expectations and began sending her resume to small businesses offering salaries as low as $140 a month, a third of what she hoped to make.

Looks like American youth aren't the only ones with an inflated view of themselves and their value.

The self-esteem bug seems to be infecting the rest of the world.

[martin_fierro]

"All along, I thought if I went to a good university, everything would be fine," Sun said on a recent snowy afternoon. Her eyes welled with tears as she went on.

When Sunny Gets Blue.

[highlander_UW]

Typical liberal article...the author clearly doesn’t grasp how things are done in most of the world, yet chastise others for their own faults. In most of the world, China included, WHO you know is more important than what you know. The girl probably didn’t get the position because someone with connections got it.

[Ciexyz]

Can't she take a government civil service test and get on some hiring list? Just wondering how they dole out government jobs in China. Or do you have to know someone to get in?

[Iron Munro]

Looks like American youth aren't the only ones with an inflated view of themselves and their value.

Also, the law of supply and demand seems to work just as well in China as it does in the USA.

When you have more freshly minted graduates with Humanities degrees than the market needs, and you have fewer fast food clerks than McDonald's needs, market forces will prevail.

[grey_whiskers]

Wow, China sounds almost as awesome as the globalists told me it was. Let’s send even more of our jobs there. And maybe we can borrow some money from them to expand our government. /s

Tin-foil hat mode, maybe, maybe not.

A lot of globalists are pushing BRIC (Brazil Russia India China) in search of new customers, as the US customer base is aging and the boomers are starting to retire, having Lewinsky'ed and aborted their offspring out of existence.

Then you have the Madeleine Not-Too-Brights who feel that the world is threatened by the US being the sole Hyperpower and want a new Communist power to provide 'balance'.

Then you have the Communists who want China to do what Russia couldn't.

Then you have the one-world types who need to take out the US in order to institute a global new order.

Complicating all this are the Chi-coms themselves, who want to take over the world, but in the meantime have such a rush of citizens coming of age, that the Chi-coms need to find jobs for all of them quickly, lest they revolt and overthrow the party.

For the moment, all of these interests converge; but it is unstable. China is polluting itself to death, and undercutting the US by taking the jobs, but the jobs are making things for export to the US. Despite the hype, there isn't a middle class in China large enough to support itself. The fecal material will really hit the impeller when China finally has to revalue its artificially low currency.

Cheers!

[SeekAndFind]

They're hiring.

Of course they are... but you don't need a college degree to be hired by Starbucks. And a lot of Chinese college grads have HIGHER expectations that simply working as a waiter or cashier at Starbucks.

If you have the money and the right connections, it would be better to OWN one of the franchises.

[jdm]

Someone should try gluing their ass to a Starbucks toilet. It’s already been done at Home Depot.

[BGHater]

[SeekAndFind]

I note the following paragraphs with great interest:

Wuhan Hongbo Group, a private firm, originally ran back-office operations for universities. But in the last few years, the group has launched three colleges in Wuhan. The campus of one of them, Engineering & Commerce College of South-Central University for Nationalities, was built on tens of acres of reclaimed land near the stretch of the Yangtze River where Mao Tse-tung staged his famous swim in 1966.
The college started out with 800 students; this year it has more than 8,100. Tuition runs from $1,400 to $2,000.

Also this from the same article :

Zhang Jun, vice director of the school's career center, said 92% of the 1,514 graduates in 2007 had found jobs. He said their average pay was about $140 a month, comparable with wages paid at factories and restaurants.

Calculate this -- at an average salary of $140/month, the yearly salary would be $1,400, which is the average tuition paid for a year in college.

Here in the USA, if you went to a private school, your tuition plus room and board would be something like $45,000/year. The average starting salary of an American college grad is about $40,000. In other words, the college degreed American is not doing any better than the average degreed Chinese, the main difference probably would be that it would be easier to find a job after graduation here.

However, if you went to a state university ( especially one in your own state ), or a reasonable private college ( e.g. Grove City College where tuition plus board are about $17,500 a year ), you make out better money-wise after graduation.

So, all in all, it's still better to be a college grad in the good old US of A.

[mamelukesabre]

True, but I hope you aren’t trying to say that is fair or just.

The idiot running the interviews in a state run economy is not likely the fairest arbitrator of employment.

At least that’s how I see it.

[libh8er]

The only real job is the one you create.

[metmom]

Great point.

[LjubivojeRadosavljevic]

After all, she has degrees in marketing and botany...

Well, that's her problem. She should have majored in Engineering or Accounting...Now there's a start for a 22 year-old.

Look, the same problem exists here in the US. Many students get B.A. (or B.S.) degrees in "General Studies", Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, etc. from such schools as the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. But, that get's them no where - slow.

A lot of those individuals find themselves in graduate school getting Law or MBA degrees.