Are Nowadays College Graduates Not as Competent as Before?
As an economic rule goes, when supply outweighs demand,the price decreases. The same seems true for the current situation for college graduates. Since 1999, the central government has implemented the Grand College Enrollment Plan, with the total number of college graduates on the increase in the following years. But the boomed economy does not provide enough jobs for those graduates coming out at a time. Therefore, many people reason that college graduates are not as competent as before for many of them have difficulties in finding jobs. But I disagree with this conclusion.
Firstly, admittedly, there are some college graduates who are not competent, but these students can not represent all the students. Due to the Grand College Enrollment Plan, more and more high school students have access to the higher education. Inevitably, the standard has been lowered; otherwise, university can not admit so many applicants. While those smart students in high schools are more likely to have excellent performance, other not-so-good students would have difficulties in college learning. As a result, those graduates with bad performance in college can not demonstrate the value of higher learning to the society and hence they gradually form the incompetent image of college graduates.
Secondly, those who hold this negative opinion do not take the social context into consideration. As is known, in the period when China carried out planned economic policies, college graduates did not need to worry about their jobs, for “iron-bowls” waited for them after graduation. But after the reform of higher education, college graduates have to find jobs for themselves. When hundreds of thousands of graduates compete for a limited number of job vacancies, there are inevitably many who can not procure ideal jobs.
Besides, employment is always influenced by global and national economy. When economy slows down, the corporate world would not recruit as many employees as before. For example, in 2009, many college graduates, from both prestigious universities and less-known universities, have difficulties in hunting jobs. In this sense, it is not college graduates that are incompetent, instead, it is the social context that is unfavorable to college graduates.
As factors combine to lead to a result, one can not simply reach conclusions without taking various factors into account. Otherwise, one would make reductionist mistakes. In this case, those who think college students are not as competent as before have made this kind of mistake. They just attribute college graduates’ difficulties in finding jobs to their incompetence, without exploring the social and economic situations.