Chinese college students have graduated to find the job market
vary from when they entered school and those so-called "hot
courses" might fail to land them good jobs.
Graduates with different majors have very different experiences
in the job market. But degrees in finance, economics and a few
other fields often guarantee good jobs.
"I have applied to 15 companies online, and most of them show
interest in hiring me," said Wang Ming, a postgraduate of Labor
Economics at Southwest University of Finance and Economics in
Chengdu, Sichuan Province.
He said that all the students of economics, finance and
accounting in his university had received at least two job
offers.
Students of mining and materials science which were not popular
before, however, have observed more employment opportunities than
before. The employment rate of graduates from the two courses was
100 percent at Guizhou University in southwestern Guizhou
Province.
"Many companies would come straight to our school to find
employees," said Wang Hua with the university's employment guide
center.
On the contrary, some so-called "hot courses" including law,
journalism and computer science which have received large groups of
students, failed them in the job market.
Experts said high tuition fee of those courses led to blind
enrollment expansion, which causes a surplus of supply in the job
market.
To solve this problem, Guizhou University has decided to adjust
its enrollment arrangement if the employment rate of a major drops
below 70 percent.
"The law school recruited around 600 students in 2004, but we
only took about 100 last year, raising employment rate from 70
percent to 90 percent,"said Wang Hua.
Another problem which makes it difficult for graduates to find
jobs is the gap between school-learned-knowledge and requirements
of real career.
In 2007, merely 60 percent of computer science graduates were
employed. Meanwhile, job vacancies in IT industry exceeded one
million.
IT companies complained about the large amount of money they
spend on pre-career training of new employees. They hope
universities adjust their courses to better prepare students for
their future work.
In addition to academic background, employers are looking for
college graduates with a good sense of responsibility. This merit
is followed by a sense of team work, ambition, flexibility,
eloquence, independence, confidence, pressure-bearing ability,
communication skills and professional excellency on a list of
merits which help college graduates land jobs, according to a
survey conducted among human resource managers of 200 companies by
Shandong Talent Resource Web site.
The competition in the country's job market has become more
fierce with a growing number of college students.
Statistics show about 5.6 million students will graduate from
higher education institutions in 2008, an increase of 640,000 over
2007, according to China Daily.
Last year, nearly 1.4 million college graduates, or one third of
the total, failed to find jobs, the newspaper said.
(Xinhua News Agency January 12, 2008)