Letter to a student
Dear # #,
I was actually not joking when I said that China is more in need of good people than you are in need of a good job. What I wanted to express is that you shouldn't see it as a huge privilege if you get hired as a civil servant - the main beneficiary wouldn't be you but rather your country. There is no doubt whatsoever that you would make a better job in such a position than a lot of people who have such a position today. If they hire people like you, clearly they're getting something right - which would be quite a progress over the past, too. Yet it turns out that progress, as usual, is very slow.
Job markets often aren't especially functional. The numbers of available jobs and applicants are seldom in a balance. This is often due to the fact that people who are qualified for a certain kind of job can't be "produced" quickly. It takes time for people to learns the necessary skills. For example, when it turns out that people are needed for a certain kind of job which needs a certain kind of college degree it can still take years before enough people have graduated from colleges. In the meantime employers will fill the gaps as best they can, so when people finally turn up with the right kind of degree, they find that the jobs have already been taken by others, who somehow managed to slip in without the qualifications.
This problem gets worse when inadequate planning is involved. Inadequate planning seems characteristic of the public sector, e.g. state-run schools in Germany. I happen to know someone who has worked in this sector for more than 30 years and the utter lack of common sense in planning is one of the things which drive him absolutely crazy.
In China, the central government dramatically increased the number of college students a few years ago, only to find out now that, as a result, there are a lot of graduates. Surprise, surprise. It seems they somehow forgot that graduates need jobs. Most graduates are qualified for teaching in state-run middle schools and that was actually why the government increased the number of college students in the first place. They wanted to have more qualified teachers. Only they didn't increase the number of teaching positions in the state-run schools. So, according to a government survey, around 60% of graduates these years will not be able to find jobs for which they are qualified. A striking example of really, really bad planning, which seems to have more in common with the bad old days of communism than with a modern country. But there you are - no use crying over spilled milk, as they say.
In fact, although this is a real problem for people your age - it makes it unnecessarily hard for your and a lot of others to find good jobs -, it's even more of a problem for the country as a whole. China is in dire need of well-educated middle school teachers, as well as of well-educated young people in a lot of other areas, not least in public administration. And these people are there, they are graduating from colleges in great numbers. Still they don't get the jobs they need, and the country doesn't get the people it needs in these positions. China can't be run well without people like you. It isn't able to face up to the huge challenges of the present and future if it doesn't use the pool of talent and qualification which is there in your generation. China can't possibly afford to squander you and millions of others. But this is exactly what happens.
It's not just a Chinese problem. We definitely have it in Germany and it's there, in varying degrees, in a lot of countries. However the situation seems especially bad for Chinese people getting B.A. degrees in 2006, 2007, 2008 and probably for some time to come. The situation will get better in the future, not because more jobs are created but because the government is now reducing the number of college students again. This, of course, doesn't solve the underlying problem at all: China does need lots of well-qualified young people and reducing the number of college students is obviously not the way to go. The government has already introduced new rules which make it much harder than before to get into postgraduate studies. More students were allowed to pass the entrance exam in the last few years than this year. You and a lot of other students I know failed the exam this year - not because you aren't as good as those who passed last year but because the rules have changed.
In the same way, it is very hard for you and a lot of your classmates to find a good job - not because those who found a job a year ago or two were any better but because the number of graduates has increased and the number of jobs has not.
Getting a certain degree, finding a certain kind of job - this is often influenced much more by objective, structural factors than by personal, individual ones. Ironically, Marxist theory has always stressed these objective, structural factors which determine people's lives. This is in fact one of the main characteristics of Marxism. It's ironical because in China, of all places, you're told all the time that it all depends on you. You have to try hard, you have to study like crazy, you can make it. If you try hard enough you'll be a big guy. If you don't get to be a big guy, it only shows you didn't try hard enough. It's always the individual person who gets all the blame if something doesn't work out. This is completely at odds with Marxist theory. They force you to learn all this "political theory" stuff, Marxism Leninism Maoism Dengism Jiangism, but they don't even get the basics right themselves.
I've seen some really very well qualified people blaming themselves and getting very unhappy because they just couldn't find an adequate job. Time and again, I have been unhappy and I have blamed myself for precisely the same reason. It seems people just don't have the nerve to not blame themselves, even if they understand that something isn't their own fault. The thing is, however, I've also seen these very same people find jobs eventually - jobs which may not always be perfect for them, not what they used to dream about, but jobs which are really OK and which they're happy with. The same is bound to happen to you. Just give it some time and keep trying, but without pressuring yourself.
You may well find that you keep blaming yourself. I hope, however, that what I said above can at least help you to put this "blame game" into perspective. Worry about the future - I do that myself. Blame yourself for whatever doesn't work out - we all do. But don't think that this is the whole story. A lot of things are beyond our control. Yet things do work out OK at some point - and for you this point may well be just around the corner.
Always rooting for you,
Oliver
(25 March 2007)
