China sees mismatch in labor force
Print Edition
CHINA is waking up to a potentially damaging mismatch in its labor market.
A record 7.27 million graduates, equivalent to the entire population of Hong Kong, will enter the job market this year — a market that has a shortage of skilled workers.
Yet many of these university and college students are ill-equipped to fill those jobs, prompting the government to look at how it can overhaul the higher education system to bridge the gap. The problem is part structural, part attitude.
While most liberal arts students are still looking for work after graduating this summer, 22-year-old Li Xidong is preparing to start a job as an electrician that he landed well before finishing three years of training at a small vocational school.
Li’s diploma may appear less impressive, but his coveted job in a tight labor market may hold the key to the employment conundrum in the world’s second largest economy. The machinery sector alone projects a gap of 600,000 computer-automated machine tool operators this year, media have reported.
The government has said it plans to refocus more than 600 local academic colleges on vocational and technical education — replacing literature, history and philosophy with technology skills such as how to maintain lathes and build ventilation systems. Course curricula will be tailored to meet employers’ specific needs.
Pilot programs will be launched this year, and 150 local universities have signed up for the education ministry’s plan, the Xinhua news agency has reported.
After 13 years of aggressive policy to expand academic colleges, China had almost seven times as many freshmen last year than in 1998. That rapid growth compromised educational quality, especially in local colleges set up after 1999, experts say.
The government plans to reform the national college entrance exam system by setting up a technical training exam separate to the academic exam, Education Vice Minister Lu Xin was reported by Xinhua as saying. The ministry would also turn more than 600 local universities into higher-education vocational colleges, Lu said. China has 879 public universities and colleges, according to a 2013 ministry list.
“Vocational education has a bearing on China’s economic transformation and upgrading ... and on the employment of hundreds of millions in the labor force,” Yu Zhengsheng, the fourth-ranked member in the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party, told the national political advisory body earlier this month.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
