The difficulties young Chinese university graduates have had in finding a job over the past few months have been making the headlines in the media and causing concern throughout society. Education professionals in China have all had something to say about it. A good number of them, referring to the current phase of social transition in China, have come out in favour of the mass education programme that has been practised in recent years in Chinese universities. Others have raised doubts about the reliability of the figure of only 70% as the rate of employment for new graduates, which they consider to be alarmist. In fact, according to the statistics provided by the Ministry of Education itself, out of the 2.12 million graduates in the general higher education sector in 2003, 640,000 had not signed a work contract by the end of their studies
In these circumstances, it is understandable that in the current labour market in Shanghai, for example, new university graduates are settling for a monthly salary of 1,200 yuan, slightly more than double Shanghai’s minimum wage, at the same time as they are having to face significant overheads (superannuation, unemployment insurance, health insurance, etc.). If we take into account the cost of living in Shanghai (including accommodation, transport and telecommunications), it would appear that the salary of these graduates is barely enough to cover their basic needs . The purpose of this article is to better understand the current unemployment of young graduates, beyond any proposals being put forward in the context of higher education reform.