Rushing to graduate school because the bachelor’s degree has depreciated

Every year, with about 10 million students taking part, the gaokao (gaokao) college entrance exam in China is considered the most intense exam in the world.

However, according to Professor Xiaogang, director of the Center for Applied Economic and Social Research, there is another exam that is more difficult than the gaokao, the graduate exam – the kaoyan.

In 2022, about 4.57 million people registered for the graduate exam, a 21% increase from 2021. While applicants have been on record growth, the number of graduate programs has not kept pace with this increase, so acceptance rates received this year down 24%. Over the past decade, the competition in the graduate exam has become so fierce that attendees say it has become “the high-end version of gaokao”.

Passing the gaokao and getting into college is an achievement to be proud of, but nowadays, University degrees are becoming more and more popular. Since China opened up its higher education system in the late 1990s, the gaokao enrollment rate has increased from 34% in 1998 to 92% in 2021.

Therefore, students who want to assert themselves in the labor market, if they can’t get admission in top Asian schools like Tsinghua, Beijing, will have to look for the graduate exam. They see this as a second chance to prove themselves to get a good job later.

According to the survey, those who took the graduate exam this year were mainly fresh graduates, the group of students who entered university in 2018 – the year in which the number of candidates taking the gaokao exam increased by 910,000 people compared to the previous year. Currently, the job market is also more competitive due to the impact of Covid-19.

The explosion in graduate registration has left China with a “relatively uncomfortable” problem: an overtrained workforce, said Xiaogang. In a word, an individual’s education level exceeds their job requirements. This situation has occurred in a number of countries with developed industrial economies. By the beginning of the 21st century, the over-study rate in the US was 20%, the UK 22%. “This is a consequence of degree inflation, specifically college degree inflation, over the past 50 years,” he said.

On an individual level, over-studying makes people less likely to benefit from going to school than before, while reducing job satisfaction that comes with a degree. On a societal scale, educational inflation represents an enormous waste of human investment.

In mid-2021, a tobacco factory in Ha Nam province becomes at the heart of the controversy when it said that a third of the 135 newly recruited workers have a master’s degree, the rest are university students about to graduate from top Chinese schools. Their job after entering the factory is to process and roll tobacco – which only needs to be taken up by a high school graduate.

Professor Xiaogang said that education holds great significance in Chinese culture. While the US and UK have changed this, with more and more high school students choosing other paths instead of going to university. The mindset of the Chinese people is still that the higher education, in any field, the better.

“It’s for this reason that young Chinese people will always pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees. If the mindset of ‘important’ degrees doesn’t change, China’s entrance exams will become even more intense.” Mr. Xiaogang expressed.

Thanh Hang (According to Sixth Tone)