"Students that graduated from universities should be highly educated intellectuals,but more and more university man are entering employment training activities,contesting with students graduated from junior colleges or vocational schools.Is this the outlook of university man,and what's your opinion when you see all of these happening?"
A student threw out this radical question before the press could open their mouths.TianChengping,the minister of Chinese Ministry of Labor and Social Security,was the one who was confronted to this question.He had just given a report on the 50th seminar hold by the postgraduate research institute of Chinese Academy of Science(CAS),the subject is "Science and Human studies of China".Most of the audience was students from the postgraduate research institute,as they were concerned about situation of employment.
Based on his investigation of several provinces,TianChengping thought that the answer to this question involved many deep problems of Chinese labor and education system.He first announced some result from his investigation,that the imployment rate of vocational schools is above 95%,students from junior high school and then receive 3 years of vocationas education,or
students from high school and then receive 2 years of vocational education have optimistic opportunities of employment.Some students of famous vocational schools can even get their jobs before graduation.This made people to think about how to link up our need of talents and our labor system and our educational system.He thought that branches of labor and education
should try harder to find ways out of this.TianChengping said that he can only give such a limited answer,although he know this could not satisfy the audience.
He also emphasized that the quantitative inconsistency and configurative inconsistency in Chinese employment are unprecedented,no other countries have ever met such a big and complicated problem,so there is a long way to go before we can resolve it.
His investigation showed that only 70% graduates can find job in the same year of graduation.And there will be 4,130,000 graduates in 2006,so according to this employment rate,about 1,240,000 graduates cannot find their jobs this year.
TianChengping said that the government has launched a ministerial level joint eeting,conducted by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security,and assisted by many other related ministries,they are working hard to establish new policies to solves these problems.The government planned to increase 9,000,000 employment opportunities,and
has achieved 10,210,000 by October.There is hope to achieve 12,000,000 by the end of 2006,this is the result of great effort.At the same time,related branches of labor will establish a registration sytem,and offer employment direction,employment education and employment service to those college students who have not find jobs by the year of graduation.
The minister also pointed out that the government encourage graduates to work in the grass roots and underdeveloped regions,because they are most needed there.And as highly educated students,they should have sensible viewpoints and expectations of their employment,to guide themselves to reasonable choices of jobs.
We also see effectiveness from the figures given by the minister:between the year 2000 and 2005,Chinese total employment raised from 720,000,000 to 760,000,000;during 1998 and 2005,unimployed men from the reform of the stateowned enterprises found new jobs through various methods;and the total employment of stateowned enterprises decreased from 71,000,000 to 40,000,000,The government has successfully settled this remained problem from the reform and structural readjustment of the stateowned enterprises.
TianChengping concluded that the situation of employment will remain tough for a long time.He said that in the coming years,there will be about 24,000,000 job requirement per year,but there will only be about 11,000,000 new positions or reinforcement of the natural spontaneous reduction of staffs members,so 13,000,000 more jobs are needed per year,the conflict is obvious.About 10,000,000 work force will enter cities and towns each year,at the same time, 100,000,000 spare work force are transfering from countryside to cities or other nonagricultural areas.
Yiding translated from Science Times ,WangLiping and RenXiaopeng reported
