What Is a College Degree Worth in China

1、1What Is a College Degree Worth in China? IntroductionAgence France-Presse - Getty Images A job fair for college graduates in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, in October. While Chinas economy keeps growing at a rapid pace, the dim employment prospects of many of its college graduates pose a pot

2、ential economic problem. According to recent statistics, the average Chinese college graduate makes only 300 yuan, or about $44, more a month than the average Chinese migrant worker. In recent years, the wages of college graduates have remained steady at about 1,500 yuan a month. Migrant workers wag

3、es, however, have risen to 1,200 yuan. RELATED Room for Debate: Educated and Fearing the Future in China If Chinas graduates are unable to capitalize on their costly investment in education, then is it worthwhile for students to obtain a college degree? What does the imbalance say about Chinas educa

4、tion system and its economy in general? Reform the Private SectorUpdated December 4, 2010, 12:15 AM2Yasheng Huang is professor of international management at Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of “Capitalism With Chinese Characteristics.” The expansio

5、n of Chinas higher education system has frequently been mentioned in connection to the lackluster（无光泽的，无生气的） earnings of its college graduates. But the supply-side explanation is at best incomplete and at worst misleading.In 1998, China enrolled about one million college students; in 2008 this figur

6、e was more than six million. The supply-side explanation assumes that the 1998 enrollment number was just right and that subsequent expansion outpaced the needs of the Chinese economy.Most knowledge production takes place in research institutes, which require very few workers, rather than in compani

7、es, which would absorb many graduates. The more important part of the story lies on the demand side. Despite all the hoopla （大吹大擂的宣传）that foreign analysts have heaped on Chinas growth, the economy remains driven by manual labor, low-cost and low-margin manufacturing.While China is currently producin

8、g knowledge at an impressive rate, the vast majority of the knowledge production takes place in research institutes and academic institutions, rather than in firms. Knowledge production requires an elite （highly professional） but an extraordinarily small number of workers. As a result, it cannot abs

9、orb many college graduates.The next source of demand for college graduates is government agencies, but China already has one of the largest if not the largest bureaucracy in the world. The base is already so big that it is unlikely to grow even more. In fact, now hundreds and even thousands of Chine

10、se college graduates compete with one another fiercely for one civil service position.As for Chinas corporate sector, it is also not a huge source of demand for college graduates. Although China spends a lot of money on research and development, most of that spending takes place within government-sp

11、onsored research institutions, not within firms. The part of the corporate sector that employs college graduates has to do with finance, marketing and human resource management functions. Chinese firms are top-light they have a lot of workers but few managers and the service sector is very weak.Howe

12、ver, Chinese firms are extremely top-light that is, they have many workers but very few managers. The reason is that many of the Chinese firms 3are really factories. They receive export contracts and specifications and then they produce products accordingly. There is very little need for them to do

13、their own marketing and product development.Finally, the service sector is the Achilles heels of the Chinese economy. It is very weak and small, much lower, in terms of ratio to G.D.P., than India, United States, Japan and European countries. In fact, Chinas service sector in relationship to G.D.P.

14、makes China closer to oil producing countries in the Middle East rather than to any normal economy.The reasons for the managerial underdevelopment of Chinese corporate sector and its small service sector are very complex but they all have to do with a distorted financial regulatory environment faced

15、 by Chinese private-sector firms.The supply of Chinese college graduates is only “excessive” relative to the underdevelopment of its private sector and there is little possibility for change unless China undertakes bold reforms. Few Promising OpportunitiesUpdated December 4, 2010, 12:53 AMGordon G.

16、Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and a columnist at F.Is a Chinese college degree important? It is if you want to shovel excrement in Wenzhou. The prosperous city in Zhejiang province this year advertised for college graduates to fill eight spots collecting “night soil.” More than

17、 1,100 of them applied for the jobs. In these circumstances, skipping college to work as a migrant laborer looks like a smart career move.It doesnt take a college degree to figure out why blue-collar pay will increase, while the salaries of degree-holders will go down. So does joining the Peoples Li

18、beration Army. It wasnt long ago that the military couldnt attract degree-holders. No more. In 2009, 120,000 college graduates joined the P.L.A. That was three times the number in the preceding year and 12 times more than in 2006.The Peoples Liberation Army and the armies of night soil collectors ha

19、ve begun to attract college graduates because few promising opportunities are available for them in other fields. These days, theyd even covet jobs as domestic servants and nannies.4Experts say that salaries for college students generally rise after graduation. Yet the pay prospects for migrants and

20、 blue-collar workers may be even brighter. Why? Beijings poorly conceived population policies created an extraordinary bulge in the work force, and the members of the bulge are now retiring in great numbers.As they retire, Chinas work force will quickly shrink. The country has been short of labor si

21、nce 2004, and the number of workers will level off soon. Chinese demographers think that will happen sometime between 2013 and 2016.It doesnt take a college degree to figure out that migrant and blue-collar pay is set to increase. The pool of laborers that is shrinking the fastest is at the bottom e

22、nd of the wage scale. The number of college graduates, however, has been soaring by about 30 percent a year this decade. The law of supply and demand says that lower-rung pay packets（工资袋） will climb and the salaries of degree-holders will fall.Some say Chinas dynamic economy will “upscale” so fast t

23、hat bottom-tier manufacturing will migrate to Vietnam and Bangladesh. Yes, outsourcing（外包，外购；就业流失） will act as a brake on worker compensation, but the effect will not be great. Companies will move out of China and lose the substantial advantages of superb infrastructure and large networks of supplie

24、rs only after wages have risen substantially and it becomes clear they will climb indefinitely. For the foreseeable future, blue-collar wages will go up at a far greater rate than higher-level compensation.My wife and I stopped to talk to two peddlers outside the Foxconn plant in Longhua this August

25、. They had laid out a blanket on the sidewalk to display their wares, balsa model kits. “The workers have lots of money,” said one of them. They, on the other hand, did not. The pair, part of a bigger group of street hawkers, had not sold many kits that week. One was a college student in faraway Sic

26、huan province, majoring in petroleum. The other hoped to be an engineer. They said peddling was the best job they could find. High Test Scores, Low AbilityUpdated December 4, 2010, 12:53 AMYong Zhao is the University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at Michigan State University. T

27、he author of Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, he often blogs about education issues. 5Theres a frustrating paradox in Chinese education. On the one hand, millions of college graduates cannot find a job at least a desirable job that pays substantially mo

28、re than what a migrant worker makes. On the other hand, businesses that want to pay a lot more cant seem to find qualified employees. A McKinsey study found that fewer than 10 percent of Chinese graduates are considered suitable to work at multinational companies based in China. Multinational compan

29、ies in China are having a difficult time finding qualified candidates for their positions. According to a recent survey of U.S.-owned enterprises conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, 37 percent of the companies that responded said that finding talent was their biggest operation

30、al problem. A separate study by McKinsey Quarterly found that 44 percent of the executives in Chinese companies reported that insufficient talent was the biggest barrier to their global ambitions.The explanation: a test-oriented educational environment.China invented the keju system, which used test

31、s to select government officials. It was a great invention because it enabled talents from across the society to join the ruling class regardless of their family backgrounds. Hence, a great meritocracy could be created. But it evolved into a nightmare for China as the system gradually changed into o

32、ne that tested memorization of Confucian classics.Associated Press Teachers sorting college entrance exams in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, in June 2009. Keju is dead now but its spirit is very alive in China today, in the form of gaokao, or the College Entrance Exam. Its the only exam that matters sin

33、ce it determines whether students can attend college and what kind of colleges they can attend. Because of its life-determining nature, gaokao has become the “baton” that conducts the whole education orchestra. Students, parents, teachers, school leaders and even local government officials all work

34、together 6to get good scores. From a very young age, children are relieved of any other burden or deprived of opportunity to do anything else so they can focus on getting good scores.The result is that Chinese college graduates often have high scores but low ability. Those who are good at taking tes

35、ts go to college, which also emphasizes book knowledge. But when they graduate, they find out that employers actually want much more than test scores. That is why another study by McKinsey found that fewer than 10 percent of Chinese college graduates would be suitable for work in foreign companies.C

36、hinese educators are well aware of the problems with the gaokao system and have been trying to move away from the excessive focus on testing. But seeking other valid indicators of strong academic records will take time, especially in a country of 1.3 billion people.A Stratified （分层的）（分层的）Education S

37、ystemUpdated December 4, 2010, 12:53 AMQiang Zha is an assistant professor of education at York University in Toronto, and a co-author, most recently of, “Portraits of 21st Century Chinese Universities: In the Move to Mass Higher Education.”It is ironic that as Chinas economy keeps growing, the degr

38、ees produced by its colleges seem to be rapidly losing their value. Investment in education and training are not paying off for many college graduates. Why? Does China not need knowledge workers?The elite universities enjoy strong state patronage while the rest are largely left on their own. In the

39、past decade, Chinese higher education enrollment soared more than sevenfold, and the system now produces close to six million graduates a year. Shouldnt these graduates be rewarded for their education credentials and qualifications and not be treated “as cheap as cabbages”?The problem is due largely

40、 to a structural disorder in Chinese higher education.With the quick expansion of higher education came stratification of the system. Chinese higher education has grown to be steeply hierarchical, with a small number of elite national universities (around 100 in total) sitting on top of the hierarch

41、y and protected from overexpansion. Meanwhile, the majority (95 7percent or so) of local universities and colleges have to accommodate most of the increased enrollment.The elite universities enjoy strong state patronage in terms of higher concentration of public resources while the local ones are largely left to rely on market forces, which means that they have to take in more students in order to secure their revenue.This widening gap inevitably led to deterioration of the quality of high