A vicious cycle

It is perhaps time for university graduates to change their attitude to employment. Do they try to land jobs that need them rather than seek ones they unilaterally consider desirable? It seems they should have new ideas on job-hunts as spreading financial woes may make it much more difficult for them to land jobs of their choice in the years to come.

Yet, a survey published on Tuesday shows that more than 80 percent graduates in Beijing still prefer jobs in such large cities as Beijing and Shanghai. The percentage goes up to more than 90 when south China's Guangzhou is included as one of the priority employment destinations.

More than 24 percent of the surveyed male graduates opined that they would still refuse to go to work to underdeveloped, small cities or towns even if they cannot get employed for the time being. The same sentiments were expressed by more than 21 per cent of the female respondents.

That means more than 1 million graduates will remain idle without anything to do even if 70 percent of 6 million graduates get jobs in the coming year. Along with the unemployed graduates from past years, the total number of unemployed college graduates will amount to several millions nationwide.

So how to encourage these educated youths to go to work in underdeveloped areas will remain a difficult challenge for the country.

Graduates do not want to go there because of their underdevelopment. But the lack of well-educated human resources will further widen the gap, and further underdevelopment in turn will make these areas more unattractive to university graduates. This could possibly become a vicious cycle that will hinder balanced development of different regions.

As far as the future of graduates is concerned, in big cities where the job market is overcrowded, many graduates have to work on jobs which have nothing to do with what they have learned in universities. This is a waste of not just their specialized knowledge or skills but of the educational resources they had used in institutions of higher learning.

But underdeveloped areas may have more opportunities for them to put to practical use what they have learned or their innovative ideas.

It is high time that we had special classes to educate students how to develop a right attitude in seeking a job. And governments at different levels also need to have more preferential policies to encourage or attract graduates to contribute to development of the underdeveloped areas. That may be one way to break the vicious cycle.

(China Daily 11/27/2008 page8)