Recently, the Ministry of Education launched the verification of employment data in colleges and universities in 2023. Although this work is carried out almost every year, this year’s action is obviously much bigger. A few days ago, the Ministry of Education issued a special notice on the verification of employment data of college graduates in 2023, convened a verification deployment meeting of provincial education departments for mobilization, and sent several working groups to carry out special verification in various provinces. The working group went deep into universities and departments by going straight to the topic and going straight to the front line, and adopted data verification, spot checks and on-site interviews, with the aim of strictly checking the fraud of employment data.
Recently, the falsification of employment data in some colleges and universities has aroused widespread concern, which constitutes the social background of this round of verification. At the same time, the Ministry of Education attaches great importance to the authenticity of employment data and has profound internal logic. Employment data is a yardstick to measure the running of higher education, which directly affects the enrollment, specialty setting, the formulation of teaching and training programs, the evaluation of teaching level, etc. It is very important for colleges and universities.
At the same time, the employment rate is also a key indicator of social and economic development. "Employment is the greatest livelihood". College graduates with higher employment data will increase the employment rate of the whole society, and vice versa. Therefore, the employment data and accuracy of college graduates are particularly important.
However, regarding this work, one of the major contradictions is that the employment rate does not depend entirely on the universities themselves, but also on the macro-economy, even more on the macro-economy. From the perspective of the job market, college students are completely new laborers, lacking practical experience and resources, and need a long adaptation period. When the business expands, business units are willing to recruit college graduates and spend resources on training. However, once the business unit faces the economic contraction period, the contradiction will be highlighted. At present, the employment situation is: there are limited places in the system for public examinations and supernumerary recruitment, so it is impossible to have a large-scale growth. As the main force to provide jobs, private enterprises are generally in the transitional stage in the early stage of recovery, and there is no strong ability to absorb employment.
At the micro level of graduates, there are also many factors that restrict the promotion of employment rate. During the period when the education authorities count the employment rate, a considerable proportion of students have not yet "landed". At present, many college graduates will take the public examination, compile the examination and take the postgraduate entrance examination. If they don’t succeed in the examination, a considerable number of graduates will choose World War II, World War III and even "mobile warfare". According to the latest policy, college graduates during the COVID-19 epidemic can keep their status as freshmen for two years, so that they can take the public examination. Many students would rather not be employed for this status this year. Employers are also very strong, and often take the form of "trial" and "internship" to inspect graduates, and then decide whether to sign a contract after two or three months. In the absence of bargaining power, some graduates can successfully sign contracts, while others become "free labor". This time period just missed the time node counted by the education authorities. In addition, there are also some graduates with better family conditions who will choose the way of "gap" for one year, experience life everywhere, and are not in a hurry to get employment.
In this situation, the employment work of colleges and universities is really under great pressure. Sometimes, in order to make a job, some wrong means will be taken to "do" the data. For example, the "four prohibitions" and "three prohibitions" mentioned in the documents of the Ministry of Education are typical. Employment rate data is very important, and its accuracy is related to the running of higher education. On the one hand, it is really necessary for relevant departments to verify the data, and on the other hand, they can take actions to help colleges and universities facing difficulties improve their employment situation.
Choosing a university means choosing a life experience, and the employment direction after graduation, which will affect the long-term life path. Therefore, all parties should uphold the concept of long-term ism when dealing with the employment problem. Colleges and universities should pay more attention to students’ career planning courses. However, at present, the teaching time of this course is more, and the time for visiting and communicating with employers is less, so it is difficult for students to have a clear perceptual understanding of employment. The employment rate we are counting now is counted once in August and once in December of that year. But the situation in the real job market is that many college graduates will not be able to determine their final destination until a year later. In the face of statistical time nodes, schools often urge students to sign an employment destination casually, and students’ subsequent development is often neglected. Therefore, the real employment situation should be observed over a long period of time. The employment situation after one year, the success situation after 10 years, and the matching degree of employment majors are all more telling than simple employment rate statistics.
(The author is the head of the journalism department of zhejiang university city college)
Li Xiaopeng Source: China Youth Daily
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