The 2006 national postgraduate examination, which kicked off on
Saturday, has attracted a record 1.27 million examinees, up 9
percent over last year's figure, as competition for employment has
become increasingly fierce.
Statistics from the Ministry of
Education showed that universities across the country will
recruit 344,000 postgraduates in 2006. It means one in every four
examinees will be recruited.
An increasing number of university graduates choose to hold
higher academic degrees, because they face greater employment
pressure, Wu Jiang, president of the Chinese Academy of Personnel
Science said in an interview with Xinhua.
"In the 1980's or 1990's, university graduates were destined to
have decent jobs, as they were in urgent demand after the Cultural
Revolution (1966-1976), during which university education was
suspended. But now, some university graduates have become
unemployed, due to continuous recruitment expansion and saturation
of employment market in recent years," Wu said.
Statistics showed that there were 2.8 million students graduated
from universities in 2004, only 70 percent of them found jobs upon
graduation. The number of university graduates for this year is to
reach 4 million.
The 4 million university graduates will compete with 2.7 million
vocational school graduates, 2.6 million migrant workers, 1 million
laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises and other 8.4 million
registered unemployed to seek jobs this year.
Hu Xuan, a student majoring finance in Tianjin-based Nankai
University, is one of the 1.27 million examinees of this year's
national postgraduate exam.
"I studied around the clock for preparing the exam. To be a
postgraduate of a well-known university is very difficult, but it
will bring me bright career future and higher income," she
said.
Hu also visited some job fairs and handed out applications to
banks, accounting offices and foreign companies. But so far, there
is no any optimistic response. "As a female university graduate in
the intense employment competition, the possibility of finding an
ideal job upon graduation is quite slim," Hu said.
The country's annual national postgraduate exam comprises
specialty exam, English exam and politics exam.
Competition has become increasingly fierce, as the number of
examinees rose year by year. In such circumstances, examination
cheating was often spotted in previous years.
This year, some new exam rules have been introduced to prevent
cheating. For example, a special identification card recognition
system has been put into use to check up every examinee's ID card,
so as to rule out the possibility that some examinees hired
substitutes at the examination by using fake ID cards.
(Xinhua News Agency January 16, 2006)