CRI听力:Undergraduate Employment Rate Beats Postgraduate

Zhang Wenjia graduated from Southwestern University of Finance and Economics last year, three years after undertaking Master of Translation courses.

She is now working as a full-time translator in a translation company.

"I decided to go for a master's degree basically because everybody else was doing that. Plus, my parents want me to go for a higher degree. When I was looking for job, I didn't think too much about what kind of job I wanted to do, as long as the salary is up to my expectations. My idea was above 3,000 yuan per month."

Li Juan, an undergraduate from the same university, says it took her less than a month to find a job.

"At first, my basic salary was 1700 yuan per month. But the salary is not what I care the most; I care more about the staff welfare, corporate culture and career prospects. I didn't expect to get good pay when I just joined the workforce. "

A report from a human resources center in Jiangsu Province shows that last year, over 86 percent of graduate students found jobs, compared with 90 percent of the undergraduates group.

Xiong Bingqi, the deputy director of 21st Century Education Research Institute, says the expansion in the number of postgraduate students is not compatible with the needs of the job market.

"A large number of universities are trying to expand to comprehensive universities by setting up graduate and doctoral schools. However, the expansion does not take the demands of the job market into account. In the past few years, universities mainly offered courses for academic master degrees, but there aren't many research jobs out there in the market. "

Zhang Wenjia agrees with Xiong, and says 90 percent of the courses she took during her master's degree program were about academic theories and she only picked up occupational skills during her work.

Li Juan, the 23-year-old undergraduate, says if a graduate student has no work experience or occupational skills, it isn't surprising that companies prefer undergraduates.

"Many jobs do not require high academic degrees, and undergraduates do not have high expectations about salaries as graduate students do. Plus, if it comes to a choice between a postgraduate and an undergraduate with the same age, the undergraduate may have already worked for two or three years, and companies might prefer someone with work experience rather than someone with good academic background."

Xiong believes that students should set up career plans before they apply for further education, while universities should be entitled to set up courses and subjects autonomously.

"A university should decide on how many students to recruit and what kind of courses to offer based on its scale and objective. Only by doing so, can universities offer diverse training to graduate students to meet different demands, either in the job markets or the academic field."

Previously, the Ministry of Education was responsible for setting up academic disciplines for all universities.

The central authority released a 10 year plan in 2010, encouraging universities to adjust and set up academic disciplines on their own.

Earlier this week, Premier Wen Jiabao stressed the importance of solving the problem of unemployment among university graduates.

For CRI, I'm Abhijan.