In a first, more postgrads than undergrads are set to graduate in Beijing this year, Across China, a record high of 11.6 million expected to graduate

[beijingwalker]

In a first, more postgrads than undergrads are set to graduate in Beijing this year​

• City’s universities have expanded graduate admissions and more students are seeking higher degrees due to difficulty finding work, expert says
• Across China, a record high of 11.6 million people are expected to graduate from university in 2023, according to education official

Published: 8:30pm, 20 Mar, 2023

For the first time, more PhD and master’s students are set to graduate in Beijing this year than undergraduates, according to an education official.

Su Xiuli, deputy head of a careers guidance centre affiliated with the Beijing Municipal Education Commission, also said that around 285,000 students were expected to graduate from universities in the Chinese capital this year.

She made the remarks in an interview with state newspaper The Beijing News on Saturday.

Su said that across the nation, the number of university graduates was expected to reach 11.6 million in 2023 – a record high.

She also said the proportion of graduates from Beijing universities going abroad had significantly fallen between 2020 and 2022 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, while the number of Chinese students returning from overseas for work had gone up in that period.

“The employment situation for this year’s [graduates] is still very tough,” Su was quoted as saying.

In a first, more postgrads than undergrads are set to graduate in Beijing

City’s universities have expanded graduate admissions and more students are seeking higher degrees because of difficulty finding work, expert says.

www.scmp.com

 

[beijingwalker]

The Ministry of Education has forecast that 11.58 million students will graduate from China’s colleges and universities this year, more than 800,000 more than in 2022, an all-time high. If you add in the nearly 1 million students returning from overseas, the total number of fresh graduates this year could surpass 12.5 million — putting significant pressure on the job market.

 

[S10]

That's not a good sign. It means competition is fierce and a large portion of undergrads are unemployed or underemployed. There will be social problems resulting from this.

Sometimes these showoff pieces you post are not the wins that you think they are. Tone it down a bit.

 

[Communism]

That's not a good sign. It means competition is fierce and a large portion of undergrads are unemployed or underemployed. There will be social problems resulting from this.

Sometimes these showoff pieces you post are not the wins that you think they are. Tone it down a bit.

You are looking at it on a personal level.


At the national level it is a positive.


Cheaper ultra-high skill labor is a plus.

 

[MH.Yang]

You are looking at it on a personal level.


At the national level it is a positive.


Cheaper ultra-high skill labor is a plus.

National interests that cannot bring benefits to the people are meaningless.

 

[Mista]

More postgrads than undergrads? It's kicking the can down the road. In the future you need a PhD to be a waiter?

 

[Communism]

National interests that cannot bring benefits to the people are meaningless.

China is transitioning to higher and higher on the value chain.


This requires a more and more inexpensive ultra-high educated workforce.


China doesn't rely on immigration, therefore it needs to increase the skill level of their population.

More postgrads than undergrads? It's kicking the can down the road. In the future you need a PhD to be a waiter?

This is what an education market looks like when it doesn't have unions distorting supply of high skilled labor.


The reason why the U.S. has extreme price premiums on professional class labor is largely due to deliberate supply destruction by professional "guilds".

 

[nahtanbob]

You are looking at it on a personal level.


At the national level it is a positive.


Cheaper ultra-high skill labor is a plus.

the cumulative effect of personal behavior and attitudes determines collective mood and national psyche
it is not a good sign

 

[Communism]

the cumulative effect of personal behavior and attitudes determines collective mood and national psyche
it is not a good sign

The alternative is to stagnate and make more inefficient, like the professional labor market in the U.S.


Arbitraging out the artificial guild induced supply shortages of professional class labor will start to bring the inefficiency led inequality down.



There is good inequality and bad inequality.



Good inequality is produced by increase of productivity.



Bad inequality is produced by decrease of productivity.

 

[nahtanbob]

The alternative is to stagnate and make more inefficient, like the professional labor market in the U.S.


Arbitraging out the artificial guild induced supply shortages of professional class labor will start to bring the inefficiency led inequality down.



There is good inequality and bad inequality.



Good inequality is produced by increase of productivity.



Bad inequality is produced by decrease of productivity.

everything is subjective. define "productivity" -- it is an arbitrary value of the goods you produce

 

[Communism]

everything is subjective. define "productivity" -- it is an arbitrary value of the goods you produce

Productivity is the increase in value produced for the input required.


Labor is one of the inputs.


Higher productivity is a good thing, especially in a socialist country that can easily redistribute excesses if necessary.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

That's not a good sign. It means competition is fierce and a large portion of undergrads are unemployed or underemployed. There will be social problems resulting from this.

Sometimes these showoff pieces you post are not the wins that you think they are. Tone it down a bit.

The idiotic trolls in this section claim China has a "demographic crisis" which will lead to the long-promised Coming Collapse on China(tm). If they understood anything, they'd know China has the opposite problem: too many highly qualified people are entering the workforce and the economy isn't generating enough jobs to employ them.

They're too stupid to understand that China can't simultaneously have two contradictory problems - a demographic crisis (too few workers) and a youth unemployment crisis (too many workers).

This is going to get worse in the future as AI and automation advance and it'll be particularly acute in China's case. I've thought about this issue quite a lot and one of my conclusions is that economies have a latent capacity for automation that's higher than their actual level of automation.

The reason is that firing large numbers of workers and reorganizing a business carries costs. Even if it's ultimately more profitable in the future, that cost barrier has to be overcome. That's why we don't see immediate mass firings from businesses in response to new technology. What happens is that during recessions, the business is forced to lay off large numbers of workers and it then "discovers" latent productivity. The recession forces it over the cost barrier of reorganization because its profitability and survival are at stake.

In an economy like China where technology is advancing at a blistering pace, very few businesses are capturing the full value of that technology. Their latent capacity is extremely high and slowdowns and intense competition are forcing them to fire/reduce hiring, which causes symptoms like high youth unemployment.

 

[nahtanbob]

Productivity is the increase in value produced for the input required.


Labor is one of the inputs.


Higher productivity is a good thing, especially in a socialist country that can easily redistribute excesses if necessary.

value of things changes somewhat arbitrarily in a market economy

 

[Communism]

value of things changes somewhat arbitrarily in a market economy

As long as scarcity is a thing, value of things is largely useful as a tool.


The problem you describe is only a problem in a post-scarcity society, which China is not.

 

[jhungary]

More postgrads than undergrads? It's kicking the can down the road. In the future you need a PhD to be a waiter?

This already happened here, I was just taking around town a couple of night ago in Uber by a PhD in Physics.

And I have worked with a lingerie model who had a PhD and was doing Alzheimer research in Brazil..

The problem with getting a post graduate degree is, people usually can't get a job at lower level so they go do a post grad degree, the thing is, and what people don't realise, is that the high the qualification you go, it's actually harder, not easier to find job.

This is coming from a guy with 2 master's degree 60% of my MPhil classmate still can't find a job, and that was 4 or 5 years ago.......