On April 8, 2024, the "Online Adjustment Service System" for national postgraduate admissions was launched. This signifies that the 2024 national postgraduate admissions have entered the final stage. This year, students taking the postgraduate entrance exam have received more social attention than ever before. The reason for this is that the total number of candidates for the 2024 exam is 4.38 million, a decrease of 360,000 compared to 2023, marking the first decline since 2015.
There are multifaceted reasons for this situation. Many opinions attribute it to the declining employment advantages of postgraduates compared to undergraduates. Therefore, rational individuals choose to give up the "struggle" of taking the postgraduate entrance exam.
This undoubtedly marks a new change in graduate employment. As China's higher education enters a stage of popularization and the number of graduate students continues to increase, it is essential to study such changes in graduate employment.
Our team, relying on online platforms, conducted a survey on the employment expectations of students at different levels of education (including junior college, undergraduate, master's, and doctoral) nationwide. Among them, we specifically analyzed master's and doctoral students and came up with a series of interesting conclusions.
Firstly, let's look at the employment expectations of master's students. Surprisingly, only 29.48% of master's students expressed their expectation to enter the job market, a proportion that is almost the same as undergraduates. The phenomenon of master's students not expecting to enter the job market needs to be taken seriously.
Through analysis, our team found that master's students prioritize big cities that offer broad employment opportunities and abundant resources for their career development. At the same time, they also value stable job positions and work environments, as well as the reputation of their employers, showing a high demand for economic stability and job security. Therefore, against the backdrop of a generally weak global economy and significant downward pressure on the Chinese economy, it is understandable why master's students do not expect to enter the job market.
Further analysis revealed that many students who do not expect to enter the job market believe that the future employment environment will be better than it is now, maintaining an optimistic attitude towards their future career development.
Among students at different levels of education, master's students are the most likely to believe that the reputation of their alma mater will greatly affect their employment outcomes. This partly explains why the number of candidates for the 2024 national postgraduate admissions exam has slightly decreased. According to data from 2021, "Double First-Class" universities account for 58.7% of the total number of graduate students nationwide, and many graduate students from these universities are admitted through recommendation. Therefore, some students do not have high expectations for the employment prospects of studying at non-"Double First-Class" universities and choose not to take the postgraduate entrance exam.
In contrast, among students at all levels of education, master's students are the least likely to believe that "professional technical abilities" will affect their employment outcomes. At the same time, compared to undergraduate and doctoral students, a larger proportion of master's students consider their majors to be "trap majors," resulting in a lower degree of professional identity.
This phenomenon indicates that master's students' employment plans are not confined to their majors but are more based on the reputation and word-of-mouth of their alma mater in the job market. This also indicates that master's students' employment choices will exhibit personalized and diversified characteristics.
Regarding the employment expectations of doctoral students, firstly, it is not difficult to understand that, among all levels of education, doctoral students are the group with the highest proportion expecting to enter the workforce. After all, as the group with the highest level of education and the longest time in school, doctoral students are generally aware that their student life is about to end.
Secondly, among all levels of education, doctoral students have the highest proportion of hoping that the work they engage in can have a positive impact and contribution to society, which may be due to the closest relationship between doctoral education and knowledge production and technological innovation.
Thirdly, due to their age, doctoral students are also the group most likely to consider the future situation of their children when choosing a job. This suggests that cities and units that want to attract doctoral graduates need to not only provide platforms conducive to talent development but also make targeted commitments to provide better education and growth environments for their children.
Finally, between job stability and job freedom, doctoral students tend to pursue job freedom. They value autonomy and flexibility, hoping to have greater autonomy and decision-making power to plan their research directions and work styles.
The above findings indicate that although there are significant differences in the employment expectations of master's and doctoral students, both exhibit personalized and diversified characteristics in their employment.
Based on these observations, it is recommended that employers, especially those with a low proportion of graduate employees, fully respect their personalized and diversified needs when preparing to recruit graduate students and create a harmonious and warm work environment to attract them.
In addition, similar to the graduate students in this survey who believe that the future employment environment will be better, our team also holds a positive and optimistic attitude towards the employment and career development prospects of master's and doctoral graduates.
(The author is a tenured professor at the Institute of Education, Tsinghua University. This article is a research result of the independent scientific research project of Tsinghua University, "Tracking Survey of the Whole Process of Graduate Education in China" (Project Number: 2022THZWJC29).)
