China graduates going back to school amid dismal job market

Undergraduate Xiao Lu worries that she will not be able to find work when she graduates from her degree programme in Japanese translation next summer.

- Yew Lun Tian

"When I chose my major after high school, I could not have known how artificial intelligence would take away jobs for Japanese translators," Ms Xiao, 21, told The Straits Times, adding that lukewarm ties between China and Japan do not help.

To improve her employability, she has decided to apply for a master's course in logistics. Since February, she has been studying every night to prepare for the national postgraduate entry examination in December.

In China, more university graduates are applying for further studies instead of looking for work amid a dismal job market.

Some 4.38 million students took the postgraduate entry exams for 2024, which is 212 times the number in 2014. The increase has outpaced the growth in fresh graduates over the same period.

The number of students taking postgraduate courses in China has doubled from about 611,380 in 2013 to 1.3 million in 2023, according to data released by the Education Ministry in March.

Mr Yao Wei, 24, had butterflies in his stomach in March 2023 when he flew from his native Guangdong province to interview for a master's programme in Beijing, which was taking in only three students from the whole of China.

He felt stressed as he was two months away from graduation and had no job lined up yet.

This was his only shot to get into a master's course as the Chinese are allowed to apply for only one postgraduate programme in China a year.