MIS-EDUCATING
By
Globe Correspondent
05/31/2003, Page A6, Section
National/Foreign
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The outlook is further dimmed by an unprecedented glut in the supply of new graduates: a record 2.12 million, almost twice the number that graduated in 2001, are chasing a dwindling number of entry-level professional jobs.
The dramatic increase in graduates and their difficulty in
finding jobs is just one example of the many unintended consequences wrought by
recent reforms in
"I'd say about half my classmates don't have
jobs," Wen Quan, 20, a
senior at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said recently.
While the exact numbers are not yet in for this year's
recruitment season, a walk through college corridors reveals the sense of
frustration many students
are feeling.
"The disappointment is also about the type of jobs
available," said Dong Ming Gong, 22, a mechanical engineer who also is
graduating from the institute. "So many people are taking positions that
are half as good as they expected."
In June, Dong will have to leave
Such sobriety is bitter medicine for a generation that grew up with the sense of possibility offered by one of the world's fastest-growing economies.
Throughout much of the past decade,
billion from the past two decades, and booming consumer and industrial
markets created a demand for skilled
professionals.
In response, the Chinese government relaxed university
enrollment standards. To ease the financial burden on the government, which
subsidizes universities, students with lower admission
scores were charged higher
tuition.
He Jin, an education specialist with the Ford Foundation in
choice. From an educator's point of view, and even from an economist's, an educated youth waiting
for a job is much better than an uneducated
youth
waiting for a
job."
Balancing such a Hobson's choice is the elusive art
But many of
However, specialists such as He Jin said this is being done at the expense
of weaker sections of society.
In
students at the prestigious People's High School are taught by a team of 360 teachers.
The school, which has an exchange program with
Students are also offered such extracurricular activities as
nationally recognized
sports teams, a symphony orchestra that performs internationally,
a theater group, and several dance
troupes.
Zai Xiao Ning,
the vice principal, declined to divulge how much it costs to run his school, but there
appear to be few budgetary
constraints.
Less elite schools face a very different reality. At the
"All our students are children of migrant workers," said Nan Ya Ling, the vice principal. "They cannot afford to go to local [public] schools," where fees cost the equivalent of $37 a month.
Officially, all Chinese children are entitled to nine years
of free education. But the government's decision to control educational
expenditures has led to
the introduction of supplementary fees in most schools.
Sun Wang, a recent high school graduate from Henan Province, said students frequently also pay "admission
fees," sometimes officially, sometimes not, to
enter better schools. The one-time fees range from the equivalent of $250 to $1,250 - with students
with lower scores in admission exams paying more, he
said.
For urban households that have benefited from the growing Chinese economy, such charges are not barriers to accessing education. But to others they are insurmountable.
He Jin says the imperatives of growth and constraints on
funding are leading
where they are needed.
Ironically, this is resulting in
capitalism has formed in the
West.
"It is a question of equity," said He, who argues that the emphasis
on developing quality
education for a few, as opposed to universal education for
all, is further tilting China's unbalanced development.
Far removed from the debate, Gao Shan, 14, who attends the
policewoman," she said. "But I fear I may never be able
to."
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